Crash
by Helen C
Summary: Galactica, Apollo, I've been hit. Repeat, I've been hit. Set in S2, somewhere between Final Cut and Flight of the Phoenix .
1. Chapter 1

Title : Crash

Author : Helen C.

Rating : R

Summary : _Galactica, Apollo, I've been hit. Repeat, I've been hit._ (Set in S2, somewhere between _Final Cut_ and _Flight of the Phoenix_).

Disclaimer : The characters and the universe were created and are owned by Ronald D. Moore and Universal Television Studios to name but a few. No money is being made. No copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

AN. Many thanks to elzed, siljamus and joey51 for beta'ing this, and to the countless people on LiveJournal who held my hand while I whined and whined and _whined_ about this fic.

AN2. Pure, unadulterated H/C. (If you don't like it, lie to me.)

* * *

**Crash**

Helen C.

Chapter 1 

He was running.

His lungs and his throat burned as he gulped down cold air, forcing his legs to move even faster. The dry leaves on the ground crunched under his feet as they pounded on the ground, again and again and again, his legs screaming with the effort.

He had to—

—_run, run, run, run, run, run_—

—couldn't stop, couldn't rest, not now, he had to put as much distance as possible between him and—

—_and what?_

The thought came out of nowhere, intruding on his building panic.

What was he running from? Was someone following him?

He shot a look over his shoulder but couldn't see any movement aside from the leaves blowing softly in the wind.

Did he outrun whoever he was running from?

Was he even running from anyone in the first place?

He realized he had slowed down and forced himself to pick up his pace again, disregarding the pain.

_You're killing yourself, _he thought, but he couldn't ignore the gut feeling that was screaming at him to keep going for as long as he was able.

His breath was coming out in ragged, rasping gasps—_need to rest_—each breath he took stopping high in his chest—_need to stop_—instead of providing much needed oxygen to his lungs—_need to rest._

He groaned softly and closed his eyes against the pain, then snapped them open—the ground was uneven under his feet; he had to look where he was going if he didn't want to injure himself.

As if it had only been waiting for such a thought to cross his mind, his right foot caught on something under the leaves. He was going so fast that he didn't even have time to realize what was happening before his body slammed into the ground.

Breathless and dizzy, he scrambled to his hands and knees, looking around frantically. He remained in that position long enough to make sure that there was still no one around, then finally gave up and lay down on his side, waiting for his breathing to go back to normal.

After a short while, he grew more aware of the sounds around him—or rather, the lack of sounds. He could hear the wind in the trees, disturbing the foliage of the trees. The dry leaves covering the ground crunched under his weight every time he shifted.

He couldn't hear anything else—no birds, no insects, no sign of anyone or anything around.

Where was he and what was he doing here?

He struggled to a sitting position, his body protesting every movement he made, and groaned slightly as the pounding in his head increased.

Something else was eluding him—something important and fundamental, something that should be bothering him, something he couldn't put his finger on. For a brief moment he could feel it, just within his reach, then it frustratingly escaped again just as he was about to grab it.

He glanced around, his eyes carefully inspecting each tree, scrutinizing the shadows deeper into the forest before going back to his closer surroundings. Still no sign of danger, still no movement, still nothing.

His heartbeat was finally falling back into its normal rhythm, which lead him to wonder when was the last time he had run that long without a break.

He frowned, searching his memories and coming up with nothing—nothing about the last time he had exercised, nothing about what he had done earlier in the day, earlier in the week, no memory of talking to anyone, no familiar face, nothing.

He curled up on himself, feeling like he had been punched in the gut. "I don't know my name," he said, his voice getting higher with each word. "I don't know my name, I don't know my name, I don't know my name, I don't know my name, I don't know my name, I don't—"

With an effort that took all the energy he had left, he stopped the hysterical chanting and took as deep a breath as he could.

Then, another.

And another.

He rubbed his eyes and shot another look around, in the hope it would jog his memory.

No such luck.

_I don't know my name, I don't know my name, I don't know my name, I don't know my name—_

Stubbornly, he brought his thoughts back to the present and studied his surroundings. It wasn't much help; it just looked like a frakking forest—trees and bushes, dirt and leaves on the ground, and no sign of animal life, no insects gathering around him, no sign that there were birds anywhere.

It matched his mental picture of what a forest was supposed to look like, but when he tried to recall spending time in one, he came up empty.

The trees seemed unusually high, as far as he could tell. He craned his neck up to try to spot the sky through the foliage and could barely make out a little square of almost gray sky. Was it the middle of a cloudy day, or the end of a sunny one? It was impossible to tell from the light or from what little he could see of the sky.

Thankfully, the foliage wasn't too dense at ground level but it got thicker near the top of the trees, which would make it impossible for anyone to spot him from the air. Assuming anyone was looking for him, of course.

There was very little color around, he noticed distantly. All shades of green and brown he could imagine, but no flowers. No sign of anything human around either—no shelter that he could see, no marks on the trees, nothing on the ground that would indicate anyone had ever been here before.

He mindlessly allowed his hand to dig under the dried leaves on the ground and gather a fistful of dirt. It felt different than he expected; heavier, thicker, almost like mud but drier than that. He couldn't quite pinpoint why it felt so foreign to him, but it disturbed him nonetheless.

He had to do something. He couldn't just sit here and wait for his memory to come back on its own or for someone to find him.

Moving didn't seem too appealing an option but staying put made him his stomach clench in dread—_need to run, need to run, need to run, need to run_. He decided to listen to his instincts.

It took him a while and a lot of effort to get to his feet, his stiff muscles protesting. It would be worse if he didn't keep moving, though. Besides, he should try to find shelter, or at least some cover if he wanted to rest.

_Cover from whom? From what?_

He shook off the questions, annoyed. All he had to go on was his intuition and if it was telling him that he needed to hide, so be it.

He took a step forward and let out a startled cry as he put weight on his right leg, his knee nearly giving out under him. He looked down at himself, noticing his clothing for the first time—_Idiot, that should have been the first thing you checked, there might be clues there_—and noticed the blood running down his lower leg.

How the hell didn't he feel that before?

For a long while he stayed frozen, mesmerized by the blood leaking through the thick material. _A flight suit_, he thought, and the words sounded right. He was wearing a flight suit. There was a gun strapped to his thigh and he filed away the information for later, just in case.

A flight suit must mean that he was a pilot and if he was a pilot, then maybe—

His hand flew to his collar and he hurriedly pushed the first two buttons open and prodded the base of his neck, his fingers closing on a chain.

Dog tags. He was wearing dog tags, which meant that he was military.

He brought the small metallic hexagon up to eye level, studying it.

_L. Adama. 318742._

"Apollo," he whispered.

_"Galactica, Apollo, I've been hit. Repeat, I've been hit."_

He sat back down heavily, still clutching the dog tags between shaky fingers.

_"Apollo, Galactica. Can you make it back?"_

_His Viper was shaking like it was going to come apart. A planet was looming on the horizon, blocking everything else from his view._

_"Negative, Galactica."_

_"Damn it, Apollo. We need to—"_

_"I know. I know." A tense silence, filled with static. "I'm gonna try to make it to the planet."_

_A voice over the comm.. "Galactica, Starbuck. Permission to—"_

_Another voice, stern and definitive. "Denied, Starbuck." _

_"Frak!"_

_"Starbuck, Apollo. Shut up and obey orders."_

_Then, another voice, anchoring him to the rest of them for a few more moments. "Apollo, Actual. We'll come back for you, Lee."_

Lee shivered and looked around, desperately hoping that this time, another pilot was going to emerge from the forest and walk up to him.

Of course, that wasn't the case.

"Not dead yet," he muttered between clenched teeth. _Not going to die any time soon either._

He tried to dig into his memory for more information and eventually, bits and flashes of the struggle to land his bird in one piece came back to him—disconnected images, impressions, aborted thoughts and gestures.

He remembered pulling the ejection handle and being thrown into the sky, wind gushing in from every direction, slamming him into his seat, pushing down on him until he wanted to scream.

His parachute had deployed as it should have; he remembered staring at it, remembered hoping it would save his life, dreading the landing.

Then, nothing—a big black spot where the memories ought to be.

_Head injury._

He let go of his dog tags and carefully prodded his forehead, the back of his head, his left temple, grimacing when his fingers hit a tender spot. There was something warm and sticky covering his hair and skin.

_I'm bleeding._

How much blood had he lost? How bad was the head injury? He swallowed nervously; considering that he hadn't remembered his own name until he had seen it engraved in the metal of his dog tags, most likely bad.

While he was sitting, he should probably take inventory of his other injuries. He spared a brief moment to wonder if he had done so after the crash, and how many times he may have done so since then. As the thought did nothing but make his stomach twist with fear, he got down to business.

Head, check.

His back and spine were probably fine, considering how fast he had been running.

His arms didn't hurt aside from a general, dull soreness—the kind he'd suffer from after putting too much strain on his muscles.

He poked at his ribs through the flight suit. A few of them seemed tender, but nothing gave way under his fingers. Bruised, cracked at worst, then.

He pushed against his right side, but that didn't hurt any more than bruises would either.

Then, he went to his left side, and let out a muffled curse. Damn, definitely deep bruises, if not worse. There was nothing he could do about that. Hell, there was nothing he could do about any of his injuries; he didn't have a first aid kit, didn't have any drugs available right now. It seemed like a good idea to have a clear knowledge of how badly he was injured, though, so he went on.

His left leg was fine. The right one was still bleeding sluggishly. The flight suit was torn open and he peeled it away from his skin, widening the opening. It was hard to tell under the blood, but there were at least three deep lacerations there. Not enough to break an artery, thankfully, but deep enough to be a problem. For one thing, they were probably going to keep splitting open until they could be sewn shut. For another, open wounds on an alien planet meant that germs were probably gathering already. If it got infected, he'd be in even more trouble.

The only thing he could possibly do was wrap a makeshift bandage around it and hope for the best, so he struggled out of his flight suit, pushing the top down to his waist, and tore two large pieces of fabric from his tanks. They were covered with sweat but it would have to do.

He wrapped the fabric around the wounds as tightly as he dared, hoping it would be enough.

It was growing colder and Lee shivered and put his flight suit back. The fabric was clinging uncomfortably to his skin but it was better than catching a cold. He rubbed his hands together. _Shouldn't I have gloves?_ He frowned, trying without success to remember what he had done with them. He should have had a helmet too, and he didn't remember how and when he had lost it—or left it behind.

Not remembering was frustrating as hell but he shook himself. It was getting darker and he needed to get moving if he wanted to find somewhere safe to spend the night.

Getting to his feet wasn't easier this time, but he struggled through, gritting his teeth and thinking about the Galactica. They were looking for him and they would find him.

His father would find him.

The memory came out of nowhere, as he was carefully putting his right leg on the ground, testing its behavior as he put weight on it.

_"Galactica, Apollo, do you copy?"_

He had tried to contact them.

Unfortunately, his Viper had been destroyed and his helmet comm. was either damaged or not powerful enough to reach them.

_"Galactica, Apollo, do you copy?"_

There had been no reply, no one to listen to him, no one to hear his voice as he called out to them over and over again.

He tried to disregard the fact that since the beginning of the war, they had left more pilots behind than they had managed to rescue. It didn't matter that jumping back for him would be nearly impossible; it didn't matter that the risk would probably be considered too great to take.

If he didn't want to go insane at the thought of dying alone on this rock, he had to cling to the hope that his father would find him.

He kept on walking, relieved that the pain in his leg seemed more manageable. His head still hurt but the pain was growing distant and he hoped that meant he was doing better.

It suddenly occurred to him that he didn't even know how far away from the crashed Viper he had landed; he didn't know how long he had run or in which direction, how long he had spent unconscious, how long it had been since the crash. He checked his watch, finding without surprise that it was broken. _I've done this before, too. How many times?_

Each step he took might make him more difficult to find and he wasn't even sure that it was necessary for him to hide.

_Yes, it is. I just don't know why, but I know it is._

As if a switch had been flipped, it came back to him—a flash of metal in the distance, blinking red lights.

He stopped walking, heart beating wildly in his chest.

There were Cylons on the planet.

_There are Cylons everywhere._

He fell to all fours when his stomach rebelled and retched, distantly noting that his stomach seemed mostly empty.

_It happened before._

The dry heaves left him shaking, tears streaming down his face. His left side hurt from the exertion, like it was being repeatedly kicked, but at least he wasn't throwing up blood.

He tried to get up and things started to spin. He fell back to his knees, narrowly avoiding the puddle of vomit, then lay down on the ground. It felt like being in a spinning Viper; he didn't know which way was up and which way was down, didn't know anything except that he was spinning and falling, out of control.

He felt nausea rise in the back of his throat again and swallowed painfully, willing it to pass.

He shivered, covered in cold sweat, light headed and disoriented.

_Do they know I'm here?_

_Do they know I'm alone?_

_Are they looking for me?_

A wave of hopelessness washed over him.

_Galactica will never be back. It would be too dangerous if there are Cylons around._

He felt almost ashamed for wishing that some of his fellow pilots would risk their lives for him. He didn't want anyone to die for him but damn it, he didn't want to die here or become a Cylon prisoner either.

_Dad promised. _It sounded childish in his own mind, and he had outgrown the certainty that his father was all-knowing and all-powerful long ago. Still, it was reassuring, and he knew he would hold on to the memory until the end—whatever form it took.

He rolled over to his side and pushed himself up on an elbow, everything starting to spin around him. It didn't look like he was going to stay conscious for much longer.

He looked around, hoping he'd see some way to hide in case the Cylons were looking for him. He couldn't see anything and his vision was starting to go dark. For lack of anything better, he crawled under branches, allowing the bushes to shield him from sight.

It would also prevent anyone friendly to spot him as well, but there was no helping that. He'd rather the Galactica crew missed him—assuming they came—than being caught by Cylons.

On that thought, he gave up the fight and allowed himself to pass out.

* * *

TBC...


	2. Chapter 2

Title : Crash

Author : Helen C.

Rating : R

Summary : _Galactica, Apollo, I've been hit. Repeat, I've been hit._ (Set in S2, somewhere between _Final Cut_ and _Flight of the Phoenix_).

Disclaimer : The characters and the universe were created and are owned by Ronald D. Moore and Universal Television Studios to name but a few. No money is being made. No copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

AN. Many thanks to elzed, siljamus and joey51 for beta'ing this, and to the countless people on LiveJournal who held my hand while I whined and whined and _whined_ about this fic.

AN2. Pure, unadulterated H/C. (If you don't like it, lie to me.)

* * *

Chapter 2 

Kara slammed the door to her locker shut, noticing with grim satisfaction that the two nuggets who were still in the room were keeping well out of her way.

Good. She wasn't in the mood to deal with them and their questions right now.

Logically, she knew that postponing the SAR mission until the next morning was the only option. There was no way they could start searching for Apollo in the dark, no way they could safely cover ground during the night.

It didn't mean that she had to like it.

In fact, she'd still be arguing with Tigh if the Commander hadn't stepped in, his tired voice reminding her that he, too, had a lot to lose. His calm, "That's an order, Lieutenant," had brought her back to reality far more efficiently than Tigh's sniping comments about her inability to follow orders.

Her bag in hand, she headed to the showers. She wasn't far from disappointed when she found them deserted. If there had been someone here, she might have had a chance to yell at them to get them out, and maybe it would have helped her vent some of her frustration.

She took off her tanks and pants and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she was starting to take off her bra. Her jaw was clenched so hard it hurt and her reflection was scowling at her fiercely, like she was responsible for everything that was wrong with the world.

If Apollo had been around, she'd have found a way to push his buttons and he'd have been glaring right back at her, not yielding her an inch.

_Be all right, be all right, be all right, be all right, be all right, _she prayed, willing the words to make their way through the emptiness of space and reach him down on the planet.

There was a hint of helplessness in her eyes and she turned her back on the mirror, not wanting to see that expression on her own face.

Apollo was fine; they'd track him down, bring him back home, she'd tease him for crashing and all would be well again.

_Until next time,_ a little voice whispered, treacherous. _There's always a next time. How long until your luck runs out? How long until one or both of you can't get home? _

She finished undressing and stepped into the shower, turning the water as hot as she could stand it and closing her eyes under the spray.

It was night on the planet and Apollo was down there. Alone.

Without opening her eyes, she clenched her right fist and slammed it into the wall. The only thing that made her hold back instead of punching it full force was the knowledge that she'd be grounded if she broke her hand, and she wanted to get down to the planet first thing in the morning.

It hurt anyway. She wiggled her fingers experimentally, almost enjoying the dull pain, then turned off the water and wrapped herself in a towel.

Frakker had to be all noble and self-sacrificing, but she had heard the edge of fear in his voice when he had hailed the Galactica.

_"Galactica, Apollo, I've been hit. Repeat, I've been hit."_

She doubted anyone but the people closest to him heard it, though. He was good at putting up a front; Kara just knew him too well to be fooled by it.

_"Damn it, Apollo. We need to—"_

_"I know. I know." And in the silence that followed, she just knew what he was going to say. "I'm gonna try to make it to the planet."_

A small part of her wished she had just disregarded orders and followed him. At least if she was down there with him, she would be able to do something instead of being stuck here, waiting for orders.

She knew what he would say to that, though. Hell, he had said so as he was going down. _"Starbuck, Apollo. Shut up and obey orders." _

_Damn it all to hell,_ she thought._ Shut up and obey orders, my ass. I should have followed him, should have spotted that Raider in time, should have been quicker, should have been able to cover him. _

Shaking off the thought—what was done was done; no point in dwelling on it—she dried off her hair with a towel, leaving it hopelessly messy and tangled.

Apollo was her best friend and one of the best pilots they had left. He was her last link to Zak, her last link to the past—to simpler times when all that mattered was making it through the training and finally getting a chance to play with the big toys.

She closed her eyes, the water cooling on her skin, making her shiver in the silent bathroom.

_Be alive. _

She picked up her clothes and made her way back to the bunkroom. Only Helo was around when she entered, wearing his fatigues, sitting in his rack and staring off in the distance.

"You okay?" he asked without looking in her direction, his tone neutral.

She grunted at him and set out to look for fresh clothes in her locker.

"Do you think—?" he started.

She cut him off. "No." She tried not to think about the old man's face as she made her report after the recon mission, Racetrack standing silently next to her. She didn't think Adama was going to sleep very well tonight, if he slept at all.

Damn Cylons, damn war, damn Apollo, and while she was at it, damn the whole universe for putting them in such a situation to begin with.

She unwrapped the towel and finished drying herself off, the silence heavy in the room. She got dressed quickly and closed her locker again.

Helo took a deep breath before speaking again. "When are we—?"

"First thing in the morning." She climbed on her rack, feeling his eyes following her movements.

"We'll find him," he said, his tone quiet and certain.

"We better," she replied, not caring that it sounded like a threat.

She closed the curtains before he could reply, effectively ending the conversation.

It wasn't Helo's fault that Apollo got hit protecting his Raptor and she shouldn't take it out on him, but the real culprit had been shot down from the sky and there was no one else available. Helo could take it; he knew her well.

She lay down and stared at the closed curtain. She remembered her own fear when she'd crashed down on that moon—fear that she was going to be left behind, fear that she was going to die alone on that rock. Sure it was drilled into them during training that they were expendable, that the safety of the civilians, of the military at large, was more important than any one of them. But at that point, she had thought that she would never be shot down; it didn't happen to the good pilots, only to the bad ones, the ones who had no business being in a cockpit anyway.

It had taken her a long time to realize that even good pilots got unlucky sometimes. It had taken even longer—it had taken her crashing—to realize that even she could get unlucky sometimes.

It was Apollo's turn to be unlucky. Did he find learning this lesson as difficult as she had?

When she had crashed, Apollo had been up here, fighting for her, and she knew how close a call it had been. She wondered if he thought they had abandoned him. He must have had time to see the Galactica jump to safety. Did he assume he had been left behind?

Hell, for a moment there, Kara had feared that was exactly what was going to happen. When the President, Tigh and the Commander had disappeared in a briefing room, she had waited outside, petrified that they were going to come out and tell her that they weren't going back.

Then, they had emerged, their faces grim and unreadable, and the Commander had said, "I'm going to need a volunteer to—" and she had said, "Present, Sir," and he had smiled.

She had gone back on a Raptor with Racetrack, long enough to make certain that the Cylons weren't around anymore so they could launch a SAR mission.

Miraculously, there was no Basestar, no Raiders, nothing around the planet (though it was still possible that there were Cylons on the ground).

Miraculously, the SAR mission was given the go-ahead.

Miraculously—well, that was as far as the good news went.

Apollo wasn't replying to their hails; explanations ranged from simple electronic failure to death.

_Be alive, gods, please, be alive._

How long did they have until the President decided that it was time to stop wasting resources? The woman owed Apollo a lot, but she had the rest of the Fleet to think about and personal gratitude only went so far, especially with politicians.

Kara sat cross-legged on her rack, her back pushing against the bulkhead, and closed her eyes.

If she couldn't sleep, she could at least do something useful. Maybe a prayer to Artemis would help. Gods knew Kara would need to hunt well in the next days.

* * *

Despite the fact that the necessity to rest while he could in order to be clear headed had been drilled into him by too many years in command, Bill didn't think he was going to be able to sleep tonight.

He wondered whether his son was able to rest, down on the planet, but stopped that thought before it could lead him too far—before he could start to wonder whether or not Lee was injured, or scared, or as unable to sleep as he was.

_He's just a soldier, _he reminded himself. _Just another soldier under your command. _

It didn't work any better than the other few hundred times he had tried it.

There were many good reasons why members of the same family weren't allowed to serve together, and this was certainly the main one. Making decisions that could lead to the death of someone else's child was hard enough. At least, before the war, no commander would have had to make decisions about the life or death of his own child.

The war had changed that, as it had changed a lot of things—most importantly the relationship between Lee and him.

He didn't regret having his son back in his life but days like this, he wished he didn't have Lee under his command—an adult, an officer, when he still remembered the five-year-old kid running to him, welcoming him home. A pilot to send on missions with little chance of success, a pilot vanishing from DRADIS a few moments before a jump, a pilot to be declared lost and presumed dead.

He hoped it wouldn't come to that but he had to prepare himself for the possibility. The President wouldn't allow them to remain here forever. He was surprised she had agreed to come back in the first place, all-clear from the recon mission or not.

He wouldn't have blamed Roslin if she had decided that the risk was too high. Part of him was still hesitant to take that risk, wondering what kind of message it sent to the troops when they'd had to leave others behind so that the most people could be saved at the expense of the few.

The rest of him didn't care, as long as it meant that he didn't have to turn his back on this planet and leave Lee behind.

Noticing he was slumped at his desk, he sat up straighter and raised his head, but there was no one around to see him look strong. Letting out a deep breath, he leaned his elbows on the wood, resting his head on his hands.

He had promised Lee that they would be back for him, and they were. It had taken some discussion, it had taken sending Starbuck and Racetrack on what might have been a suicide mission, but they were here.

He had once promised Lee that they'd never leave him behind and he wasn't so sure he'd be able to keep that promise. Sooner or later, they would have to consider the survival of the Fleet and balance it against the chances of finding Lee.

He knew which way the decision would go when that happened.

The shrill sound announcing an incoming communication startled him. Instinctively, he reached out and picked the receiver. "Adama."

"Commander." The President's voice was soft and soothing; he had always found it annoying but now, he was recognizing its value, if only from a strategic standpoint. People made a lot of mistakes when dealing with Roslin, and the most frequent one was underestimating her. Even he had made that mistake more than once. "I just talked to Colonel Tigh."

"Yes," he replied, waiting.

She took a breath. "How long do you think—"

He cut her off ruthlessly. "There's no way to know. We don't know where he might have crashed, though we've determined a few likely sites. We won't know anything until we can send Raptors down there." _But we've tried hailing him and he's not replying, and I'm sure Saul told you that, too. _

"I see."

He sensed her hesitation and didn't say a word. He wouldn't make it easier for her. And if there came a time to leave Lee behind, she would have to say it too. She would have to order their retreat and condemn his son to death herself. He might be able to bring himself to obey, but he didn't have it in him to do it himself.

Lee would have argued that it was for the best—in the end, Lee had agreed to leave Kara behind, just as Bill had—but Lee was young and there were a lot of things he didn't know, starting with what it felt like to lose a child.

_He's just another soldier._

"Sooner or later, Commander, we'll have to make a decision." He heard her take a deep breath. "But not right now."

"Not right now," he replied, hoping his voice didn't betray the relief he felt. _And as late as possible._

"Good hunting, Commander," she said, and ended the communication before he could reply.

He hung up the receiver and rubbed his eyes, tired beyond words. He blinked to chase the fatigue and his gaze fell on the picture he kept on his desk—himself and his boys in happier times, back when it still seemed like his marriage, his family, could be saved.

It was already clear, even then, that Lee was going to be a pilot. Bill remembered seeing the light in his son's eyes when he saw Vipers up close, the way he drank Bill's fellow pilots' words every time the conversation involved flying. He remembered picturing Lee in the future, wearing wings and flying Vipers, and how proud he had been when Lee had been admitted into flight school, when he had made Lieutenant, then Captain.

At the time, he had assumed that his son would make a career in the military, just as he had, just as Zak had planned to. He had even, on occasion, enjoyed envisioning Lee commanding his own battlestar, or teaching new recruits everything he knew about flying.

Now, whenever he tried to picture his son's future, he kept coming up blank. The Cylons had taken all their options away, all their plans, all their hopes for the future. The CAG position was as high as Lee would ever get, unless the Fleet was on the run long enough for him and Saul to die.

And of course, there was also the possibility that Lee would get killed in battle, which brought Bill right to his starting point.

If they couldn't find Lee fast… Well, there would be no future to worry about.

He rubbed his eyes, then took the bottle of ambrosia and poured himself a glass. He grimaced as the alcohol burned his way through his throat, waited until it had passed before taking another swallow, willing the fear to go away.

It didn't.

* * *

TBC...


	3. Chapter 3

Title : Crash

Author : Helen C.

Rating : R

Summary : _Galactica, Apollo, I've been hit. Repeat, I've been hit._ (Set in S2, somewhere between _Final Cut_ and _Flight of the Phoenix_).

Disclaimer : The characters and the universe were created and are owned by Ronald D. Moore and Universal Television Studios to name but a few. No money is being made. No copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

AN. Many thanks to elzed, siljamus and joey51 for beta'ing this, and to the countless people on LiveJournal who held my hand while I whined and whined and _whined_ about this fic.

AN2. Pure, unadulterated H/C. (If you don't like it, lie to me.)

* * *

Chapter 3 

When Lee woke up, he was lying on the ground, shivering. Everything hurt, like he'd been in a fight or a car accident—like bruises on top of bruises.

_What's going on?_

The last thing he remembered was climbing into his Viper earlier in the day. How he had gone from his cockpit to here was a total mystery but he didn't like the feeling of urgency lurking at the back of his mind—the feeling that he was missing something important, maybe something vital, and he needed to remember, needed to figure out where he was and what was happening to him.

He let out a soft sigh that echoed unnaturally loud in the silence and rolled onto his back. Something scratched at his face and he let out a yelp, raising his hands to protect himself. His fingers met something thin and solid and familiar, but it took him a moment to place the feeling.

Wood—branches—and leaves.

He was under a bush.

What was he doing here?

He tried to find a memory, an image, a word, anything that might shed some light on the situation. Nothing came to him.

He tried to sit up but the branches came too low to allow him to move that much. He'd need to crawl from under here.

_Crawl to where?_

Lee shook his head as the thought imposed itself, uninvited.

_I need to get out in case they're looking for me_, he told himself. But in case who was looking for him?

"The Solaria," he whispered, but the answer didn't sound right for a reason he couldn't pinpoint.

He was sure that he had been on the Solaria landing deck earlier today.

He was sure that he hadn't been on the Solaria landing deck earlier today.

Damn it.

"What's wrong with me?" he asked aloud. When no reply came, he shivered again.

_I should know that. _

_Why don't I know that?_

He needed to move.

He needed to stay put.

What was wrong with him?

He had been in his Viper and then—

_His Viper was shaking like it was going to come apart. A planet was looming on the horizon, blocking everything else from his view—a planet he didn't know, a planet that didn't match any of his mental pictures of the Colonies._

"I've been through this before," he said, and that sounded right. "I've been through this before and—"

But the feeling of deja-vu dissipated before Lee could fully study it, leaving him with the frustrating sensation that the memories he so desperately needed were lurking close below the surface, just within his reach and yet totally inaccessible.

He clenched his right fist in frustration, slammed it on the ground once, then another time, the impact of his hand with the cold dirt barely registering through the numbness.

He shivered, even though except for his face and his hands, he didn't feel so cold.

Out of nowhere, a flash of memory rushed through his mind. The Viper, falling to the ground—_need to get out, need to get out, need to get out, need to get out, need to get out_—grabbing the ejection handle, pulling it, something catching in his leg, making him yell in pain.

As abruptly as it had come, the memory vanished, leaving him shaky and breathless. His head pounded with every breath he took—a dull, throbbing pain that seemed to come from the center of his brain and encompass his whole body.

_Head injury_, he thought. _But why—_

"I'm telling you," Black Sheep was saying, and it didn't surprise Lee in the least that he was now in the locker room of the Solaria, getting ready for a drill. "We'll be done in plenty of time to organize that game, and if we're not—"

"And I'm telling you," Shadow replied, her voice rising in annoyance to cover Black Sheep's rambling. "There's no way we can pull it off in under twelve hours. That's the point of the damn exercise."

Black Sheep turned to Lee, who was finishing securing his flight suit. "What do you think, Apollo?"

Lee turned to them, a winning smile in place. "Just because no one has ever gone through that drill in under twelve hours, doesn't mean that we can't," he replied, grabbing his gloves before closing the door to his locker.

"That's the spirit!" Black Sheep got to his feet, his flight suit making a creaking sound as he stretched out. "Piece of cake."

"Famous last words." Shadow didn't look very happy with either of them and Lee shrugged. He privately thought that Shadow was right. The exercise—survival on hostile ground, parameters of the planet unknown, no backup and few resources—was designed to be impossible to accomplish in twelve hours, or so the legend went. The best way to deal with Black Sheep, however, was to humor him, which was something that Shadow just didn't seem to understand. Of course, she was new on board. She had never spent eight hours stuck in a Raptor with him. She'd learn soon enough, as the rest of them had.

"We'll make it quick, won't we?" Black Sheep insisted, staring at Lee.

"You guys always make it quick," Astrea threw in as she entered the room, helmet in hand.

"Ah ah," Lee said, his tone as flat as he could make it. "Your wit never ceases to amaze me."

"Look at our two little deities, sniping at each other," Black Sheep said, putting an arm on Shadow's shoulders and pulling her close to him.

She shrugged him off with a glare promising a slow and torturous death if he ever touched her again, just as Lee and Astrea turned to him, annoyed. "Frak off," Lee said, as his wingman snapped, "Still atheist, frakker."

The Solaria locker room dissolved around him. Lee barely had time to notice that the three other pilots kept talking while he vanished away, as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. The last thing to go was his locker, and then, he was alone in the dark again.

He shook his head in an attempt to clear it.

Had the drill gone wrong? Was that why he was here?

The objective had been for the two Vipers to land on the planet and for the pilots to vanish out of sight, so the crew of the Raptor could look for them. Each of the Viper pilots had received specific orders; Lee's were to prevent the Raptor crew from reaching Astrea.

Getting injured in a crash hadn't been part of the plan.

This was ridiculous. They must be looking for him and he needed to get out from under the cover of bushes if he wanted to be found.

Just as he was about to start crawling out, he heard a metallic clanking from a few feet to his left. He opened his mouth to call out to whoever was out there but a glimpse of metal caught his eyes and—

—_he was standing in a hallway and a Centurion was rushing to him and he was trying to fire his gun but the magazine clicked on nothing. Empty, it was empty, and he was going to die and the Colonies were gone, and his mother was dead, along with billions of people, and_—

Lee felt a scream wanting to make its way out. He brought his arm to his mouth and bit on his sleeve—noting absently that it tasted like wet dirt—closed his eyes and tried to keep the noise in. He couldn't be discovered. He had to stay immobile, he had to keep silent, he had to stay under cover, he had to be quiet, they wouldn't find him, they _couldn't_ find him, if they did it would be—

He cut off the thought with some effort; now really wasn't the time to think about what the Cylons would do to him if they spotted him, not if he didn't want to lose it.

Still biting on his sleeve, Lee observed the Centurions as they patrolled the area—the Cylons were back. The humans had lost the war. How the frak had he managed to forget that? How could he not have remembered that they had lost everything, that they were on the run, that they were losing a little more ground every day?

Were they looking for him? Was his bird spotted when it crashed? Was there a heavy Cylon presence on the planet?

Was the Solaria looking for him anyway?

No, not the Solaria, he remembered now. The Galactica. He had been stranded on the Galactica on the first day of the war and it had saved his life.

_Up until now._

Moving as quietly as he could in this position, he brought a hand to his leg, noting with relief that he had a gun. That was something, at least.

He took a few quiet, deep breaths, his hand hovering near the gun. They wouldn't take him without a fight. They wouldn't take him at all if he had anything to say about it. If it came to that, he would have to find a way to keep one last bullet for himself.

The Solaria was gone. Black Sheep and Shadow and Astria and dozens of other pilots, most of whom he had once considered his friends, were gone with her.

His eyes were burning and Lee bit down on the fabric of his flight suit again to stifle a sob as the scope of the defeat washed through him all over again.

Gone, it was all gone. Most of his family. His friends. Gianne—her face the last time they had spoken like a punch in the gut. Everything he'd ever owned, but his uniform and his flight suit. The flight school, the military headquarters. His home. His old school.

All their schools and their teachers and what they had learned over generations.

48,000 humans left—all that remained of twelve planets.

Everything else had gone up in smoke in a few hours; their entire civilization, their families, their scientists, their writers, their musicians, their painters, everything they had ever built, now merely a memory the survivors were condemned to live with.

It took him a while to identify the surge of heat that rushed through his body as hatred. The rage he had felt as he buried his gun deep into Boomer's face paled in comparison to this feeling. It took everything he had for him to keep still, to keep from rushing to the Centurions and take them apart with his bare hands.

It would only have gotten him killed, though. He needed to stay alive until his shipmates found him or until it became clear that rescue would never come.

Once he reached that point… Well, then all bets would be off. If he had to die, he'd rather go in a spectacular and useful way. Offing a few Centurions seemed to fit the bill.

The Centurions—four of them, as far as he could see—were heading away. He refused to relax, though. It was too soon, they might still come back.

He settled in for the wait. How long until he could consider it safe to move? Thirty minutes? An hour?

He took a look at his watch; it was broken, the hands stuck on 2.16.

_I've done this before. I've checked the time, and the watch was broken._

An icy fear twisted at his insides. How many times had he repeated the same actions? How many times had he remembered the fall of the Colonies before forgetting it again? How many times had he wondered what was happening to him?

How long had it been since the crash? Several hours? Several days?

He willed his breath to remain even, hoping it would help him to calm down. There was no way he had spent more than twenty-four hours here already; he was hungry but at most he had missed two or three meals, no more, and he didn't think he would have been careless enough to eat anything down here since he had no way to make sure that the vegetation was edible.

He was thirsty, though. Now that he paid attention to the fact, his mouth seemed downright parched. He'd need to find a water source at some point.

He reached for the pen and notebook he always carried on the pocket on his arm, and studied the first page for a while. There was nothing written there, yet something was nagging at him, like an insect buzzing around him, annoying, teasing.

He waited, staring at the blank page, allowing his thoughts to drift freely without trying to shepherd them to order, and eventually it dawned on him that he could see clearly enough to notice that he hadn't written anything.

A look at the sky through the branches confirmed it. The day must be rising.

_Check that,_ he told himself. _You survived your first night here._ The words were cold comfort. The longer he spent here, the less likely it became that he would be rescued—and the more chances he had of running into Cylons.

He pushed the thought away. Hopefully, there wouldn't be a second night. Hopefully, tonight, he would be back on the Galactica.

In the meantime, he had to make sure that he wouldn't lose precious time trying to gather bits and pieces from his fragmented memory again. It would be useless to write in the notebook; for all he knew, it wouldn't occur to him to check it the next time his memory played tricks on him. Instead, he used the pen to write on the back of his left hand, _Cylon War, Colonies lost, Viper crash, Focus!_

Hopefully, that would be enough to prevent him from going around in circles next time he lost track of what was going on.

Once he felt sure that his surroundings were clear, he'd get out from under here and look for somewhere safer—and hopefully more sheltered.

He shuddered, suddenly feeling very tired, and struggled to keep his eyes open. He couldn't fall asleep here again; he had to move first.

It took a lot of effort, but he managed not to lose consciousness.

* * *

TBC...


	4. Chapter 4

Title : Crash

Author : Helen C.

Rating : R

Summary : _Galactica, Apollo, I've been hit. Repeat, I've been hit._ (Set in S2, somewhere between _Final Cut_ and _Flight of the Phoenix_).

Disclaimer : The characters and the universe were created and are owned by Ronald D. Moore and Universal Television Studios to name but a few. No money is being made. No copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

AN. Many thanks to elzed, siljamus and joey51 for beta'ing this, and to the countless people on LiveJournal who held my hand while I whined and whined and _whined_ about this fic.

AN2. Pure, unadulterated H/C. (If you don't like it, lie to me.)

* * *

Chapter 4 

"This frakking weather is just making things worse," Helo said, his first words since they had boarded the Raptor an hour earlier.

Kara grunted in reply, frowning at her controls. They were flying over their best guess at crash sites (which was already starting to look like a bust). Under normal conditions, they would have been able to spot evidence of a crash from this altitude, but the pouring rain was dramatically reducing their visibility. They'd need to make several passes, which would take time—time that Apollo was going to spend under that rain if he hadn't found some shelter somewhere.

At least, the thick foliage would shield him. Too bad it also made their search that much more difficult.

Under the circumstances, she was ready to bet that Apollo wouldn't mind being drenched to the bone if it meant he got back to the Galactica sooner.

"I can't see anything," Helo added. "But it's hard to be sure."

"Which is why we're going to do it again, and again, and again, until we're sure," she said. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him move in what she assumed was agreement.

None of the pilots wanted to go back to the Galactica and tell the Commander that Apollo hadn't been found.

"We should go lower," she said. "It would give us a better chance at spotting something unusual."

Like a trail of burned or broken tree tops neatly pointing them in the right direction, for example. Crashing a Viper, even in such a dense forest, was bound to leave traces.

Helo hesitated a moment before replying, "Sure."

Flying lower would make it more hazardous, but then they hadn't enrolled in the military to keep safe. She guided the Raptor lower, praying it would work and they'd find something.

She knew—she had read the reports—that the search for her when she had crashed had taken place in even worse conditions, but this was probably the first time she truly understood what it must have been like for Apollo, the Commander and the other pilots.

She didn't know how they had managed to keep searching as long as they had but she could appreciate the strain it must have put on them, now that she was living through it.

She'd find Apollo if she had to turn over every rock on this planet, if only because she wanted—needed—to repay that debt.

* * *

"This is weird," Helo muttered.

Kara didn't reply, too busy studying the area. Helo had spotted a flash of metal just at the edge of their search perimeter, in the one place where the trees were a little sparser. Not quite a clearing (they wouldn't be so lucky, and landing was a nerve-wracking, time-consuming procedure) but it was manageable enough for them to risk it.

There weren't any damaged trees, though, and that didn't bode well. Apollo's Viper had been hit; there was no way he could have landed it neatly.

Still, metal was a clue that they needed to check out.

"It looks like Kobol, doesn't it?"

She shot him a look, annoyed at the reminder. "A forest is a forest. But it sure as hell is raining just as hard." She unclasped her sidearm and waited for him to do the same. "And it's difficult to spot toasters in all the trees."

The rain was pouring down on them, plastering their hair to their faces, running down the exposed skin of their faces. "Better go," she said, and led the way away from the Raptor.

It didn't take long before Helo spoke up again. "He probably ejected."

There was no way he could possibly know that but Kara merely nodded. They had chosen to work based on that assumption because it was better than the alternative but it was yet another thing that made their life more difficult; even if they found the Viper, it didn't mean that they'd find Apollo with it.

_But it would narrow the search, and narrowing would be good._

"Starbuck?"

"Yeah."

"He knows what he's doing," Helo said.

He didn't need to mention that crashing on an unexplored moon or planet in wartime wasn't the same thing as going through survival drills in flight school. Luck, strength of will and improvisation skills counted at least as much as training did. Apollo was good but many things could go wrong, even if he did everything right.

She shook herself and focused on the situation at hand; find unidentified ship, identify it, report back.

As usual, her instincts were proven correct when, after ten miserable minutes of struggling through the woods, they finally laid eyes on a Cylon Raider.

They stayed hidden behind the trees, but the stillness in the area told Kara that there were no Cylons around. She shot a look at Helo, who looked a little sick, and finally allowed the implications to sink in.

There were Cylons on the planet.

Frak it all to hell, but it just might mean the end of their search.

She curtly motioned for Helo to fall back and followed him. Both of them moved as quietly as possible, and she noticed without surprise that he was pretty good at that. Of course, he had had plenty of practice running around and avoiding detection since the beginning of the war.

She walked for five minutes before stopping, finally far enough from the Raider to dare speak up. Helo followed suit and waited a few feet from her. She glared at the trees all around, thinking about how satisfying it would be to punch or kick one of them with all her might.

"Starbuck?" Helo called.

She clenched her fists. Time to make a decision.

"What do we do now?" he asked carefully.

Very good question, indeed. If they reported this, it was possible (even likely) that the search would be called off. The only reason they had come back was that there were no Cylons in orbit, but finding them on the planet changed things.

She looked in the direction of the Raider.

She didn't _have_ to report this. Only she and Helo had seen it, and Helo was bound to be as torn as she was. Apollo was a fellow pilot, a superior officer, and for all his prissy attitude, he was well-liked. They'd had to learn to leave pilots—friends—behind, but it always ate at them when they did it.

Keeping this quiet would increase Apollo's chances, give them more time to hunt him down. Helo would understand, probably even agree.

She didn't have to report this.

She didn't have to report this, but if she didn't and somebody died for lack of information…

She closed her eyes, thinking about Apollo. He was somewhere out here, waiting for rescue. He may be injured, he may be dying, and—

—and he wouldn't want anyone to die to save him. He'd be the first to tell her that she needed to give a full report to the Commander. It wasn't her call to make, not even if her best friend's life was at stake.

He would fight for her if their places were swapped, he _had_ fought for her, but according to certain rules that he had sworn to obey, just as she had.

The rain was still falling (why couldn't they find a sunny, warm planet, for once? Why couldn't they find a safe planet, for that matter?), the splattering of drops on the leaves and the ground drowning out all other sounds. She wondered if there was some sort of wildlife around—birds, mammals, anything—then frowned, shaking herself. It was an insignificant detail and she didn't have time for that.

Helo was still waiting when she opened her eyes. She couldn't read his face, and that surprised her. It usually wasn't so hard to guess what he was thinking. "He's out there somewhere," he said, his tone neutral.

"Yes," she said. "So, let's report to the Commander, fuel up and then we'll go take a look at another possible crash site."

He opened his mouth and she braced herself for the question that was sure to follow. "What if—" He saw the look on her face and shut up.

Good.

That confirmed what she had always thought; when he wasn't busy impregnating Cylons, he was a pretty sensible guy.

She started walking again, kicking at some leaves as she passed. Not as satisfying as punching something would have been, but she would take what little she could get.

* * *

The CIC felt wonderfully comfortable and warm after the planet. Too bad Kara wasn't in the mood to enjoy it.

The Commander received the news about the Cylon Raider as she had assumed he would. His face remained unreadable but she was sure his shoulders slumped a little. It was barely noticeable, but she knew him well enough to see it.

For a brief moment, she wished she'd made a different decision, wished she'd kept that intel to herself.

_It wasn't my call to make,_ she reminded herself.

She just wished it hadn't been anyone's call to make.

Tigh opened his mouth and Kara braced herself. _Don't say it, don't say it, don't say it, don't say it._

"Sir, I think we should consider calling off the search."

The Commander barely seemed to hear him. He was staring at the tactical table, lost in thought. Kara didn't want to guess what was going through his mind right now. She shifted from one foot to the other, aware that every eye in the CIC was fixed on the three of them, waiting for someone to talk.

_I shouldn't have made that report. They're going to call it off and it'll be my fault. _Her stomach twisted at the thought and for a short moment, she was sure she was going to get sick, right here and now. Just what her reputation needed, really, and she had to bite back a snort of laughter.

What the frak was wrong with her?

"Commander," Tigh insisted. Kara managed to keep silent but it was a struggle. There was still a small chance that the Commander would allow her and Helo to go back; she couldn't waste it by being sent to the brig for telling the old bastard exactly what she thought about him.

"Get me the President," the Commander ordered, his voice tired. He turned to Kara as Dualla opened the channel. The usually composed communications officer seemed tense and exhausted, more subdued than usual.

"You didn't see any Cylons, just the Raider, correct?" the Commander asked.

"Yes, sir," she replied, heart in her throat.

Then, Dualla announced that the President was waiting and the Commander turned his back to Kara, taking hold of the transmitter. "Madam President, there's been a change of situation."

Kara met Tigh's eyes. To her surprise, the man didn't seem nearly as satisfied as she'd thought he would be. Astonishing, considering how little he thought of Lee.

"Lieutenant Thrace reported they found a Cylon Raider down on the planet."

Kara struggled to keep her face impassive, unsure whether or not she was succeeding._ If they call it off, it'll be my fault_. She counted down the seconds before the Commander talked again. _One, two, three, four, five, six—_

"No, they didn't see any Cylons. Just the Raider."

_One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve—_

"Impossible to say, Madame President." The Commander brought a hand to his face, massaging his right temple. Kara wondered whether he had managed to sleep at all the previous night; there seemed to be a myriad of new lines on his face. "We always knew it was possible there were Cylons down there. DRADIS isn't picking up anything in orbit yet, and—"

He stopped talking and Kara resumed counting. _One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen—_was the President talking or was she silent, weighing the pros and cons before making a decision? It was impossible to tell from looking at the Commander; he might as well have been turned to stone_—twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six—_

The Commander suddenly stood straighter, the slump in his shoulder disappearing_—twenty-seven— _

"Thank you, Madam President," he said_—twenty-nine—_

Kara released a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding as he hung up the transmitter—_thirty—_and turned to her_—thirty-one._

"You have to the end of the day, Lieutenant," the Commander said. "Find him."

She saluted and left, all but running to the flight deck, heart beating in her chest at a speed that had little to do with her pace.

* * *

Two additional Raptors had joined the search but so far, they had nothing to report.

In another hour, it would be night on the planet. In another two hours, if there was still no sign of Apollo, the Fleet would leave.

Determined as she was not to let that happen, there was only so much Kara could do. "Come on, Lee. Give me something to work with," she muttered under her breath as she took the Raptor on the third flyover of the site they were surveying.

Helo shot her a look from the co-pilot's seat but didn't comment. He had barely said a word in the last three hours. Talking felt like a waste time that would be better spent focusing on the search.

_Breathing_ felt like a waste time that would be better spent looking.

Did Lee feel as frustrated as she did now when he was looking for her, as the hours ticked by and SAR mission was unable to find her? It must have driven him insane—just as this was driving her insane.

What had it felt like for him when he'd had to obey orders and accept to leave her behind?

What would it feel like to him if they had to leave him behind and he kept waiting for a rescue that never came?

"Come on," she insisted under her breath. At least, it had stopped raining while she was on the Galactica. It probably wasn't any less cold outside but the visibility had vastly improved.

"Starbuck," Helo called.

Something in his voice brought her back to the present as quickly as if he had hit her. "What?"

"I think we found the Viper." He swallowed audibly and she shot a look in his direction, finding him focused on his readings. "I thought I saw something on our last pass and I wanted to be sure…" He trailed off but she was already alerting the Galactica and moving the Raptor down to check it out.

_Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you._

* * *

When they boarded the Raptor again, an hour later, they could barely see a few feet in front of them. She closed the hatch, staring into the darkness, fighting down the urge to throw up. It wasn't the first crashed bird she saw; there was no reason to be so shaken up.

_Except it's impossible to tell whether or not he used his ejection seat, because there's nothing left of the damn Viper._

_Except if he ejected, there's no way to tell where he landed._

_Except it's possible the old man will order the Fleet to jump away before we can check all the possibilities._

_Except he might have been captured by the Cylons already._

She didn't allow the thought to take hold in her mind. At least there weren't any Cylons around the Viper; maybe they had been there and decided the remains weren't worth losing time over, or they hadn't found it in the first place.

It didn't matter; small miracles were better than none at all.

As far as she was concerned, Apollo was alive and mobile and that was it. She would be back tomorrow to look for him even if she had to commit mutiny, and this time when she landed, she wouldn't go back to the Galactica without him.

* * *

TBC...


	5. Chapter 5

Title : Crash

Author : Helen C.

Rating : R

Summary : _Galactica, Apollo, I've been hit. Repeat, I've been hit._ (Set in S2, somewhere between _Final Cut_ and _Flight of the Phoenix_).

Disclaimer : The characters and the universe were created and are owned by Ronald D. Moore and Universal Television Studios to name but a few. No money is being made. No copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

AN. Many thanks to elzed, siljamus and joey51 for beta'ing this, and to the countless people on LiveJournal who held my hand while I whined and whined and _whined_ about this fic.

AN2. Pure, unadulterated H/C. (If you don't like it, lie to me. And if you feel the need to offer con. crit., thanks, but not on this one, please.)

* * *

Chapter 5 

The Leoben model found him a little before dusk.

Lee was drinking water, kneeling on the bank of a small stream he had found earlier in the day—a day he had spent dozing on and off in a cavern he had stumbled upon about an hour after it had started raining.

The rest had been good for him. For what was probably the first time since the crash, he had woken up remembering where he was and why he was here. The headache that had plagued him for as long as he could remember had mercifully lessened in intensity, though it was still lingering. His leg, on the other hand, hurt like crazy.

"Could be worse, could definitely be better," he said aloud.

The voice coming from behind had him on his feet, gun pointed in the direction of the noise, before he could analyze the words.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Captain."

His heart beating wildly in his chest, headache coming back full force, Lee kept a steady aim as Leoben walked to him, a smile on his face and hands held at shoulder's level as if to emphasize that he wasn't a threat.

Shit.

"But maybe I can help," Leoben offered.

"Well, you could leave," Lee said without thinking, hoping he was imagining the slight trembling in his hand. "_That _would be helpful."

"Lower your weapon, Captain," Leoben replied. "You wouldn't shoot your only way off this planet, would you?"

Lee didn't reply. What would have been the point? The Cylon was only going to play games with him if he got an opening, and Lee didn't plan on giving him that chance.

"If you follow me, I'll take you back to the Galactica," Leoben added.

Lee would have laughed if he hadn't been so terrified. As it was, he settled for a terse, "You really think I'm that far gone?" He had to force each word past the lump in his throat and it came out more strangled than he would have liked.

"Well, you don't look… How do the humans put it?" Leoben made a show of pondering the question before finishing, with a sardonic smile, "Peachy. I thought it might be worth a shot."

Lee gripped the gun a little tighter.

"Think, Captain. Surely, if rescue was going to come, it would be here already. They're gone, and you know it. If I die, I'll just resurrect into another body and tell the others where I last saw you. If you cooperate with me, you'll get out of this alive. We'll even heal you."

"And what do you want in exchange?" Lee asked, knowing that he had to make his move now. He doubted Leoben was here alone, and if they were circling him, he couldn't risk waiting longer.

"Nothing much, real—" Leoben started.

Lee pulled the trigger before he could finish, the gunshot echoing impossibly loud in the dead silence. Lee stared as Leoben's body stumbled backwards, landing on the ground with a heavy thump, then as the blood started to run from the head wound.

_Move, move, move, move. _

He started to run straight ahead, bypassing the corpse, ignoring the way his body protested, ignoring how much everything hurt and how much he wanted to lie down and rest.

He ran ahead, set on putting as much distance as possible between Leoben and himself before night fell completely and he couldn't see anymore.

* * *

Lee woke up in a cell. Everything was white around him—the walls, the ceiling, the ground, the light. He had been stripped of his flight suit and uniform and dressed in white scrubs as well.

Leoben was staring at him from the other side of the bars. The bars were also white, and Lee couldn't hide his surprise upon noticing it.

"So, Captain, how are you doing?" Leoben asked, but while his voice matched with Lee's expectations, his face had morphed to Kara's.

The expression on her features was something he had never seen on her, though. It was cold and heartless—the expression of a machine.

When he was a kid, he had heard a lot of stories about the first Cylon war—stories whispered by the officers who sometimes came home to visit his parents, stories told by the other kids at school who also had family members in the military. Stories about glorious battles, stories about the heroism of pilots, stories about prisoners of war and what the Cylons did to them.

With the years, Lee had realized that most of these stories must be apocryphal—the Cylons transformed into bogeymen to scare the little kids.

Some sounded real enough to be true, though.

He tried very hard not to remember the horrors he had heard, told by overeager kids who were still ignorant enough to think that there were good, exciting things to be found in war.

He swallowed nervously, noticing that the pounding in his head was getting worse. _It's because I'm scared, _he thought, and a wave of shame washed over him. In the stories from his youth, the soldiers who had been taken prisoner had never been scared, not even when faced with the certainty of torture and death—especially not when faced with the certainty of torture and death.

Of course, the stories he had heard as a kid were a bunch of crap. If he'd had any doubt left about that after going through flight school, they would have been totally dispelled when they left the civilian ships behind them to reach the Ragnar Anchorage in time, abandoning civilians—men and women, children and babies—to be slaughtered by the Cylons.

Heroes didn't do that.

_But survivors do._

_Humans do._

He took a breath through the pain. He was going to get sick if this went on for much longer, and sadly, the Cylons probably wouldn't even care if he threw up on them. At least it might piss off a human… _Damn toasters, not even thrown by a little vomit,_ he thought, and muffled back a chuckle.

"So, Lee? Enjoying yourself?" Kara/Leoben asked, still with Leoben's voice.

"No," he said, his throat tight. He was sweating in the scrubs and he wondered how hot it was. His hands felt cold though, so cold he could barely move his fingers.

"No? What's wrong?" She pouted at him, and that, too, was something his Kara would never do.

He couldn't be interrogated.

He knew a lot about the Fleet, about the Galactica—not as much as his father, Tigh or the President, but still too much to be taken prisoner.

"Come on, Lee," Kara/Leoben said, and Lee blinked in surprise. She had stepped into the cell—when had that happen? He hadn't seen her come in—and she was running a hand up and down his chest.

Lee tried to step back but found he couldn't move, his feet rooted to the ground, couldn't do anything but stand there as she smiled up at him and said, "Come on, we're friends. We can have some fun. We can confide in one another."

Lee closed his eyes, willing the whole scene to disappear, willing himself to wake up.

He didn't, but as he opened his eyes to look at Kara/Leoben again, he felt something being slipped in his hand.

A gun.

"Come on," she said, her face hard. "Do your duty." She slapped him hard enough that he had to take a step back—his feet cooperating at last. "Be a good little soldier."

He raised his hand, the cold of the metal seeping into his skin, right down to his bones. Why had she given it to him?

She stepped back, crossed her arms against her chest. She was watching him, her face expressionless, and that was even more disturbing than the way she had acted before, because Kara wasn't that absent, ever.

She was waiting.

_I can't allow them to interrogate me._

He met her gaze, reading nothing there, and raised the gun to his own temple.

_I can't allow them to interrogate me._

She laughed then, a metallic, bitter laugh. "Oh, bold. I like your style."

Lee pulled the trigger without replying, then blinked at her, horrified to find that he was still alive.

"You didn't really think it would be so easy, did you?" she asked. She put a hand on his, unclenching his fingers without effort, then took the gun away from him. "Too bad," she added as two Centurions walked into the cell. "If you had tried again, it would have worked. One empty slot. Seven full ones."

The door opened and the Centurions grabbed his arms. Lee tried to struggle away from them but couldn't break free, no matter how hard he fought.

"Guess we'll have some fun now," Kara/Leoben said.

* * *

Lee woke up with a scream stuck in his throat.

For a while, he sat there, panting, looking around wildly for a sign of Cylon presence.

There was nothing to be seen but that didn't reassure him. His hand went to the gun strapped on his thigh, and only met the fabric of his flight suit.

_I don't have my gun anymore, I don't have my gun anymore, I don't have my gun anymore, I don't have my gun anymore—_

He dropped to his knees, frantically searching around for it—

—_I don't have my gun anymore, I don't have my gun anymore, I don't have my gun anymore_—

—only taking a breath when he found it against the roots of a tree, a few feet from him.

He sat against the tree, trembling, arms wrapped around himself, gun held loosely between shaking fingers, and waited for his heart to stop hammering in his chest.

Absently, he touched his cheek. He could almost feel the sharp sting of pain as Kara/Leoben hit him but even though he prodded hard, it didn't hurt. It wasn't bruising.

_Because it was all a dream._

He leaned back on the tree, resting his head against the unyielding wood. He was hot, his face flushed and sweat running over his back.

_It shouldn't be so hot._

He shifted against the tree, trying to find a comfortable position.

_"Guess we'll have some fun, now."_

Lee closed his eyes, desperately trying to deny the fact that he was going to get sick. Unfortunately, denial didn't help. He let out a strangled moan as he got to his knees and tried to keep from crying out as his stomach emptied itself, the pain in his head growing worse with every second that passed.

When he came back to himself, he was sitting against the tree again, his whole body aching with strain and exhaustion.

He shot a look at the makeshift bandage he had wrapped around his leg, grimacing at how filthy it was despite the fact that he had changed it in the cave, only a few hours ago.

He should really take care of that; it would at least give him something to do besides think about his encounter with Leoben (had he downloaded into another body by now? Were they looking for him again? Was the Galactica looking for him or had they given up?)

When he reached out for his thigh, he spotted the black ink on his hand.

_Cylon War._

_Colonies lost._

_Viper crash._

_Focus!_

Right.

Because his memory kept playing tricks on him and he kept forgetting where he was and what was going on.

Did that mean that his encounter with Leoben had been a dream? A hallucination?

He closed his eyes, groaning softly. He hated not being able to rely on his own memories, his own thought processes.

_You need to listen to your instincts more. _The voice sounded clear in his mind, as clear as if his father had been sitting next to him—and Lee checked to make sure that wasn't the case.

_Great advice,_ he thought sourly. _Except my instincts are telling me I'm screwed and I'd rather not believe that just yet. _

"I don't understand you," he said out loud, as if his father had been around to hear him. "When you listen to your instincts, you save us all. When I do… I end up committing mutiny and almost causing a civil war."

His father, of course, didn't reply.

_Because he was never there. _

"I don't understand you," he repeated, and it made him feel a little less lonely to talk to his father, even if the man couldn't hear him. "I don't understand how you do what you do, how you can keep us together, how you can keep _yourself_ together. I don't understand the way you think; I just know I'll never be like you."

His father was somewhere up there, taking care of whatever few survivors were still escaping the Cylons and probably already mourning for him.

47,853 survivors at last count.

Well, 47,852 now.

"And here I am, having a discussion about instincts with myself." It struck him as hysterically funny and he chuckled, then started to laugh, unable to stop himself.

_Everyone's dead,_ he thought as the laughter grew, coming from deep inside him and engulfing everything. He slid to the ground, curled up on his side, wrapped his arms around his midsection and rested his head on the ground. _Everyone's dead and I crashed my Viper and I'm going to die too, and I'm talking alone._

He tried to muffle the sounds—_mustn't attract Cylons, wouldn't want to become a prisoner of the toasters, no, wouldn't want that_—and at some point, the laughter turned to sobbing and Lee brought an arm to his face, hiding his eyes in his flight suit.

_I'm going insane._

_I'm going to die._

_I'm going to die and I'm crying like a baby. If Kara was here—_

Thinking about Kara sobered him up as abruptly as getting hit with a bucket of ice water would have.

_Kara's looking for me, she must be, and if I go insane now, and all she finds is a slobbering mess, she'll have my ass._

That dragged one last chuckle out of him and he rubbed his eyes, feeling embarrassed and winded and empty.

_I'm going to die. _

He ached all over, a distant pain that seemed to come from deep inside his bones, that made him feel weary and drained of all energy. A pain he associated with his father leaning over him as he lay on his bed—how old was he? Six? Seven?—and promising that everything would be fine and he would feel better soon.

Slowly, an explanation made its way to the forefront of his mind._ I'm running a fever._

_I'm dying._

He swallowed back the laughter that was still bubbling under the surface and his eyes fell on his leg again.

_Right. Still need to take care of that._

He reached for the makeshift bandage, his hands pausing a few inches from the cloth. "I don't want to look," he said aloud, his voice hoarse and strangled.

He didn't have a choice. Even if he couldn't do anything to heal it, he could at least put a cleaner bandage around it.

"I don't want to look," he repeated, as he undid the knot and unrolled the bandage. With shaking fingers, he peeled his flight suit from his skin and carefully prodded the area around the wounds.

Aside from the cuts themselves and the bruised area surrounding it, the rest of his leg didn't hurt, which was good. The edges of the wounds had taken on a shade of red that was too deep for his liking, though, and he was pretty sure that the surrounding area was also too red.

_It got infected._

The infection was going to spread and if help didn't come before that happened, he'd be in even more trouble.

"See, there's still room for improvement," he said. "Things can always, always get worse." _Until you die,_ he finished silently.

Shaking himself, he struggled out of his flight suit to cut a few more pieces of his uniform and bandaged the wound again.

By the time he was finished, he was frozen to the bone, and it took all his energy to put the flight suit back on.

He rested his head on the bunk of the tree and closed his eyes._ Just a few minutes rest_, he thought. _Then, time to look for another place to hide from the Cylons. _

He could afford to rest for a little while.

* * *

TBC...


	6. Chapter 6

Title : Crash

Author : Helen C.

Rating : R

Summary : _Galactica, Apollo, I've been hit. Repeat, I've been hit._ (Set in S2, somewhere between _Final Cut_ and _Flight of the Phoenix_).

Disclaimer : The characters and the universe were created and are owned by Ronald D. Moore and Universal Television Studios to name but a few. No money is being made. No copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

AN. Many thanks to elzed, siljamus and joey51 for beta'ing this, and to the countless people on LiveJournal who held my hand while I whined and whined and _whined_ about this fic.

AN2. Pure, unadulterated H/C. (If you don't like it, lie to me. And if you feel the need to offer con. crit., thanks, but not on this one, please.)

* * *

Chapter 6 (The One Where Something Else Happens)

Kara hated woods. Nothing but trees to block out her view and the damn, cold wind that was still numbing her face and making her eyes water despite the fact that she'd had hours to adjust.

"Doesn't feel like home at all," she mumbled as she narrowly avoided tripping over a root. Frak. The last thing she needed was a sprained ankle. _Focus_, she admonished herself.

"I hear you," Helo said, from a few feet behind her. He had paused and was looking around. "This is just…"

"Yeah," Kara replied distractedly, but she wasn't paying attention to him. They couldn't afford any distraction. In three hours, night would fall and the Fleet would leave. She had argued long and hard with the old man but he had refused to allow her to stay behind with a Raptor. The Fleet needed her, he'd said. They couldn't lose another pilot.

The way his face had looked had stopped her from pushing even more, because as hard as it was for her, it had to be killing him. He was as composed as ever but it was obvious to her that he was slowly losing hope, and that if he had to call off the search, he'd probably lose the last reason he still had to live.

Hell, even Tigh was looking at him worriedly, and if the old bastard had noticed something was off, then the Commander really wasn't doing well.

_Apollo's not dead yet. We're going to find him and I'll kick his ass for making me run all around this frakking rock to save his hide_. She was going to make him pay for it in teasing and innuendo and slights to his abilities as a pilot, and he would laugh and shrug it off and all would be back to normal.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted one of the marines; they had spread out, partly to make it more difficult to bring them all down at once, partly so they could cover more ground, more quickly.

_Right. Still need to hurry._

"I'm so kicking his ass," she grumbled anyway. She caught Helo's bemused look but didn't explain herself. Instead, she checked, for the thirtieth time in the last hour, that her sidearm was secured to her leg and within easy reach, then picked up her pace. There were four teams on the ground, searching in a circle pattern around the crashed Viper. It was the only starting point they had, and she tried not to think too hard about the fact that if—since—Apollo had ejected, there was a good chance the wind had dragged him far from the downed ship. Even if that wasn't the case, Apollo had a three days head start on them.

_Easy as looking for a needle in a haystack._

It would take nothing short of a miracle to find him in time.

_Artemis, hear my prayer. _

Helo spoke up again, interrupting her. "Do you really think we'll leave if we can't—"

"I'm surprised we've been allowed to spend this long here," she retorted before he could finish. _If it had been anyone but the old man's son, we'd be long gone already. And everyone knows it but no one will say anything, because no one wants to tell the man that he should have left his one remaining son behind hours ago, that he shouldn't have come back for him at all._

_And Lee will know too, and he'll hate it._

_If we find him._

When _we find him._

She heard a call in the distance and her comm. came to life. "Lieutenant. We've found something."

_Not Apollo_, she realized when the Marine didn't elaborate. Nothing dangerous either, probably. The Marine—Private Sykes, if she placed his voice correctly—would have said something if they needed to take cover. He rattled off his position and she took off, Helo following close behind.

She froze when they reached the Private and her eyes fell on the corpse, aware that Helo was doing the same thing at her side.

"That's—" he started.

"A Leoben model," she completed.

"That's the second time you've cut me off," he pointed out in a distracted voice.

"Deal with it." She approached the corpse, her mind cataloging the dried blood spread in a halo around his head (_how fitting_, she thought) and the beatific expression on his face. She could picture him alive, spouting prophecies and half-truths, making himself into a philosopher, a prophet. She felt like throwing up.

"Do you think Apollo did this?"

She knelt next to the body. The wound seemed to fit with the kind of damage a colonial sidearm would do.

_You're still alive, you bastard_, she thought, feeling a smile forming on her lips. It must have been pretty cold, if she could judge by the way Helo looked at her. "Starbuck?"

"Well, I doubt one of his fellow toasters would have done this," she replied, gesturing at the body. _Though I wonder why they didn't pick him up. Too busy following Apollo? Or do they just not care about bodies?_

It was Private Sykes who broke the silence next. "So, in which direction did he take off?"

"Straight ahead?" she offered as she got to her feet. She unclasped her sidearm just in case and ordered Sykes to recall all the teams and tell them to start searching using Leoben's corpse as a starting position.

Then, she headed off, the adrenaline from the hunt burning satisfyingly in her veins.

* * *

Bill let go of the receiver and met Saul's gaze. "What did she say?" his friend asked.

"The same thing she's been saying for hours," Bill replied. "We've waited too long already, and she's very sorry."

He was glad he had chosen to take the call in his quarters instead of the CIC. He didn't need the rest of the crew to witness this discussion.

Saul snorted. "Goes to show how grateful she is after everything he did for her." His XO's voice was bitter but Bill couldn't blame him; he had never seen eye to eye with Lee and their relationship had gotten even worse since Lee had been forced to take over the CAG's duties.

The mutiny had put the last nail in that coffin; they'd work together because they had to, but that was it. As long as it didn't interfere with their duties, Bill could only watch as they exchanged barbs and thinly veiled insults. Thankfully, they were both professional enough to keep it mostly out of sight of the rest of the crew—though Lee couldn't have chosen a more public setting to take a stand when he put a gun to Saul's head.

He was still disappointed with that, he realized. Funny; his son was lost on a planet, they were going to have to leave him behind, and yet here he was, dwelling on past mistakes.

This wasn't like him.

He didn't think about the past, didn't agonize over mistakes that couldn't be repaired, didn't lose energy rehashing past hurts. He couldn't afford to—except when it came to Lee, apparently. A lot of his usual behavior patterns changed when his son was concerned, sometimes for the best, sometimes for the worst.

_If it had been anyone but Lee, we would have left hours ago_, he thought.

"Politicians," Saul added, in a tone that conveyed all the contempt in which he held them.

"She has to consider the whole Fleet," Bill pointed out. He had repeated it to himself so often in the last hours that it came out flat and rehashed—like a pre-recorded voice on an answering machine.

Hell, maybe if he told himself that another few thousand times, it might make it less bitter to swallow.

"Right, of course she does." Saul shook his head but got to his feet, case closed. Bill noticed that while he hadn't actively pushed Bill to jump sooner, he also hadn't tried to argue the case with the President. That was the second time he actually agreed with a woman he still referred to as a teacher. Bill wondered what he'd say if he pointed it out to him, but his heart wasn't in it.

_We really are going to leave him behind._

"Well, the rescue teams still have a few hours," Saul offered as he headed to the hatch. In the dim light of the quarters, it was difficult to make out the expression on his face. Was he satisfied at the outcome? Did Saul even believe that there was a chance the teams on the ground would find Lee before it was too late?

"Yes."

All he could do was wait. That was the aspect of command he'd had the most trouble with when he had been given his first battlestar. Giving orders came naturally to him, but waiting until others carried them out was more difficult. He had always been more of a doer than a thinker, had always been quick to make up his mind and implement his decisions. Something Lee couldn't seem to achieve. His son had grown into his role as CAG and was already one hell of an officer, but he also tended to think too much before making decisions. With command came big decisions to make—decisions that affected thousands of people.

_And the decisions I made in the past three days put their lives at risk. _Bill had allowed his personal feelings to stand in the way of the safety of the fleet. That was part of why his crew was so loyal to him; they knew he would do anything for them.

But there had been cases when he had needed to make hard calls—admitting that the war was lost, leaving Kara behind, forgiving the President. He had been able to let go, sacrifice some of his men to save as many people he could.

It hadn't torn him up as this did, though.

_But I'll do it,_ he thought, horrified to realize that he meant it._ I'll leave him if I have to. _

He would never forgive himself, but he would do it. The part of Lee that was a soldier, an officer, would understand why his commander had left him behind. But the part of Lee that was his son probably wouldn't, and that, more than anything, weighed down on Bill.

If he hadn't been an atheist, Bill would have prayed. But he didn't believe in the gods any more than Lee did—Lee, because he prided himself on his pragmatism, Bill because he didn't like the thought of higher beings influencing his fate. That was one thing they shared; same atheism, same blood, same love of flying and of course, same stubbornness.

At times, it was infuriating, but today, Bill was glad to know that Lee had a stubborn streak a mile wide; it would help him survive, and hopefully bring him back home.

_"Wilco, Galactica, but I tell you what; it's got to be her. This thing is flying with some serious attitude."_

He smiled at the memory. Kara had pulled off a miracle that day. And Lee had pulled off one his own when he had saved Colonial One and part of the civilian Fleet, the day of the attacks.

He didn't believe in the gods but he could have faith in the men under his command, in Kara and Lee, trust them to accomplish another miracle and bring his son back to him.

* * *

Over the last few days, Kara hadn't wasted time trying to picture what finding Lee would be like.

Had she had time to spare, maybe she would have imagined herself finding Lee and saying something to provoke him, and him replying in kind, and the two of them making their way to the Raptor bickering like they were still twenty-year-old cadets learning how to fly instead of the officers they had become.

Maybe, in one of her most pessimistic moments, she would have pictured finding him unconscious somewhere, and they would have brought him back to the Galactica and Cottle would have done his thing—for all his acerbic manners and his bluntness, the guy was good—and Lee would have been fine.

Never, however, would she have imagined finding herself facing a gun being trained on her face by Lee, no hint of recognition on his face, as if he wasn't even seeing her.

"Hey, Apollo," she called, distantly noting that the three marines who had followed her were moving to circle him. Helo was standing at Kara's side, his gun aimed at Lee. Kara lowered her own, put a smile on her face and hoped that she'd manage to keep him distracted long enough for one of the marines to make his move.

Private Sykes took a step and a twig snapped under his feet. He froze mid-movement, his eyes widening slightly, then stared at Lee's back.

Kara spotted the way Lee minutely turned his head to the sound, before frowning and leveling his gaze on her again. He was holding his gun with a white-knuckle grip, and he was covered with dried blood and dirt.

The marines started moving again, slowly, quietly. Under normal circumstances, she would have said it was useless—Lee was good ; he was bound to recognize the tactic.

Circumstances, however, were far from normal. Lee didn't look like he was going to stay on his feet much longer anyway, and even if that wasn't the case, he was in no shape to take on three marines, Helo and herself.

"Captain?" Helo tried, from his spot next to her. He hadn't lowered his gun; she wondered what Lee would make of that, but he didn't acknowledge him, merely kept staring at Kara. "Captain Adama!" Helo insisted. Kara wanted to snap at him, "Don't you see he's not hearing you?" but she restrained herself.

The gun Lee was pointing at her wavered and she saw his eyes clouding over.

_That's it_, she thought. _Pass out already so we can get you out of here, because you sure as hell look like you could use some quality time in sickbay. _

Of course, being the good little stubborn soldier he was, he didn't collapse. If nothing else, his grip on the gun got even firmer and when he focused on her again, his eyes were holding a resolve that chilled her to the bone.

"You won't take me alive this time," he said, the words obviously taking a lot of effort.

_This time?_ she wondered as he pulled the safety back.

_Frak it all to damn frakking hell and back._

The day just kept getting better and better.

"Lee?" She tried for a detached, friendly tone. _Come on, get a grip, Lee. You know me. We're friends, remember? _"How about we blow this stand and go home? Wouldn't you like to go home?"_ Where it's warm and dry and you can clean all that blood off yourself._

Kara noted that the marines were all in position, waiting for her signal.

Right. She'd give the easy way another try but if it failed, they'd just have to try this the hard way. The longer they stayed here, the more chances they had of being spotted by the Cylons. _Come on, Lee. Don't do this to yourself. Be a good boy._ "Lee, it's me." She wondered if her voice was shaking. She wondered if the men on the team could hear it, then decided that she didn't care. "What do you say we get you off this rock and into a nice, warm bed in sickbay?"

He kept staring at her, but the blank expression had been replaced by a frown. Maybe she was starting to get through to him. Or maybe his brain had been scrambled in the crash, or maybe the Cylons had captured him and played with him for a while, or maybe—

She stopped, annoyed with herself—she'd learn what happened soon enough—and focused on her friend again. "Lee? Now would be a good time to start talking." She tried to smile again, then gave it up. "You're starting to freak me out and I'd hate to have to kick your sorry ass for it."

"You don't sound like Leoben." His voice was hoarse and she imagined how much it must scratch at his throat to talk—and this only to say things that made no sense.

"That's because I'm not," she replied.

She saw him shiver as a gust of wind washed over them. He was still somewhat aware of the outside world, then. Good.

"Starbuck," Helo whispered.

"What?" She managed to snap at him without raising her voice, a talent she had perfected at flight school, where she usually used it to make cutting remarks at other cadets whenever an instructor was in range. An ability that had turned out to be useful in plenty of social situations, such as finding her best friend totally out of it and more than a little scary on a foreign planet, light-years away from home.

"Try something else."

She glanced at him and noticed that his hands were starting to turn blue. Right. The cold. She had stopped feeling it when they'd found Lee, but that didn't mean her teammates weren't still affected.

"Why don't you sound like Leoben?" Lee mumbled, and Kara sighed. Helo was right. It was time to wrap this up and get Lee to the nearest medical facility, where hopefully, Cottle could make some sense out of it all.

_Sorry,_ she thought. _But you brought it on yourself._

She gave a quiet nod to the marines, still waiting for her order behind Lee. One of them—she knew his name, she was sure she knew his name, and it was going to come back to her in a second. Wensler. Or Wenzler. Or Wendler. Damn.—started to move forward behind Lee's back, approaching without a sound. Later, she'd take a moment to marvel at the fact that such a large man could move so smoothly, so silently.

Lee shook his head absently, the movement eliciting a small grimace. How was he still standing, a part of Kara wondered, marveling at the fact. How was he still talking, and how was his aim still so steady when she could see that he could barely stay on his feet?

"I thought…" He frowned at her. He looked vulnerable, all of a sudden, all traces of his earlier hardness gone. "You were there."

"I was on the planet before, yes," she said. "But—"

"You were there," he repeated, his voice firmer this time. For reasons she couldn't even begin to guess, his eyes grew distant again. "You were there." He had gone from pale to almost gray.

"Lee?" she called. Wenzler—she was pretty sure that was his name—had stopped moving. _Good call,_ she thought. _Let's try to bring the lunatic back with us peacefully and not do more damage than has already been done._ "Did you see me?"

He laughed, a sound that made the hair on her arms stand on end—harsh and bitter and cold, so unlike Lee that for a moment, she was sure that the Cylons had killed him and replaced him with a copy—a copy that lacked all that had made Lee, Lee.

A look at Helo confirmed that he was as disturbed as she was.

She met Lee's eyes. "We need to go," she said. "Last chance to make it out on your own, Apollo."

She saw the moment when he decided to shoot; something flickered in his eyes, fear and resolve and something she couldn't quite put her finger on.

"Lee!" she yelled.

_Ohgodsohgodsohgods, he's going to get himself killed._

Wenzler—she'd need to check that that was indeed his name and then offer him a drink, or a stogie, something for being so damn good at what he did—tackled Lee to the ground just as he fired. The shot sounded, awfully loud in the silent woods.

_Great, now all the Cylons in a one-kilometer radius will know to come here. Fan-frakking-tastic._

"You okay?" Helo asked, catching her arm as she was starting to Apollo.

She turned to him. "Yeah," she said shortly. "Thanks for not shooting him."

Helo sighed and took a look around. "No problem," he replied. "We need to go. Now."

"Agreed." She approached Wenzler, who was crouched over Lee, checking his pulse. He raised his head to her after a while. "He's burning up, Ma'am."

She felt her jaw clench. _Fever, we can bet on a head wound, and gods only know what three days of running around will have done on top of that._

Lee had been turned flat on his back. His eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the sky.

_He looks dead_, Kara thought with panic. Then, he blinked a few times, ignoring their presence despite the fact that they were talking around him.

She crouched down next to him, trying to capture his gaze. "Apollo," she called.

It took a few tries until he focused on her, confusion and fear written all over him.

"You won't—" he started, and he added something that was too garbled for her to make out.

"Boy, when you bang yourself up, you don't screw around, do you?" she said. "And you smell like a latrine too, by the way."

He just frowned at her. "You don't sound like Leoben," he said in a remote tone.

"That's because I'm not."

He shook his head, looking defeated, then went still.

She opened her mouth but Wenzler spoke before she could ask. "He's still alive. Just passed out."

She nodded at the private. "Right. Let's get him back on board, shall we?"

* * *

TBC...


	7. Chapter 7

Title : Crash

Author : Helen C.

Rating : R

Summary : _Galactica, Apollo, I've been hit. Repeat, I've been hit._ (Set in S2, somewhere between _Final Cut_ and _Flight of the Phoenix_).

Disclaimer : The characters and the universe were created and are owned by Ronald D. Moore and Universal Television Studios to name but a few. No money is being made. No copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

AN. Many thanks to elzed, siljamus and joey51 for beta'ing this, and to the countless people on LiveJournal who held my hand while I whined and whined and _whined_ about this fic.

AN2. Pure, unadulterated H/C. (If you don't like it, lie to me. And if you feel the need to offer con. crit., thanks, but not on this one, please.)

* * *

Chapter 7 

Kara hated waiting even more than she had hated looking under every damn stone of the frakking planet until they found Lee. At least, down on the planet, she was doing _something_ instead of standing in a quiet corner of sickbay, looking at the bulkheads and the curtains drawn between the cubicles—why did they even bother putting these up? It wasn't like it offered any kind of peace or of privacy, and no one was fooled.

Cottle had barked at her to go wash up and eat and she had obeyed, surprising Helo enough that he had shot her worried looks all the way from sickbay to the showers until she had grown annoyed and had threatened to punch his lights out if he didn't cut it out.

Helo was generally smart, wise and had a healthy sense of self-preservation.

He cut it out.

And now, here Kara was, hair still damp from the shower, in a fresh uniform that felt blissfully warm and dry against her skin, and there still wasn't any news.

She hadn't taken the time to eat, though; she was too tired to be hungry. She was too tired to sleep as well and she suspected that the next few days were going to be hell, until she could get adjusted to her regular shifts again.

The Commander was standing next to her, staring at the same bulkhead she was—or, more probably, not staring at anything. He, too, looked like he could use a shower and a change of clothes. Kara found herself thinking, not for the first time, that maybe those who didn't have any family left were lucky. She saw the look on the Commander's face every time Lee was in danger. She had seen Lee's face when he had told her about the shooting and she had heard the stories of those who had been in CIC when it happened.

At least she didn't have any family to worry about—except for the two of them, of course, and damn if they weren't going to be the death of her.

"What's taking them so long?" Kara grumbled under her breath.

Adama didn't move an inch, didn't so much as look at her, but replied, "A nurse came by while you were out, but she didn't say much. Just that it would take time."

Kara bit her lip as the image of Lee lying on the ground flashed through her mind. "He'll be fine," she said, mostly to say something. That was what people said in such situations, wasn't it? Civilians or soldiers, all of them were alike when waiting for a doctor to emerge from the room where he'd treated someone close to them. They made small talk and exchanged platitudes, because it was doing something when there was nothing to do.

Adama wasn't replying, so she added, "He's tough. Like his old man."

She turned to him just in time to see a hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth, quickly replaced by the usual impassivity. She wondered, sometimes, the rare few times Lee allowed himself to talk about their relationship without being clouded by either anger or bitterness, whether it was the way the Commander looked at his sons when they were young, and how they would have read that expression.

Reading the Commander was difficult; it took familiarity and a willingness to look past appearances.

He had been absent for most of Lee and Zak's childhood, and Lee didn't seem so willing to take his time looking for clues about how much his father loved him.

_These two are just too alike for their own good_, she thought, and no matter how often she thought the words, they still rang true.

She wondered if the two of them would ever find a way to live together and deal with their past or if they would just take this long-standing misunderstanding to their graves. Knowing them, the latter was frighteningly likely.

It would have happened if Lee hadn't been ordered to fly during the decommissioning ceremony. It would have happened if he hadn't made it back to the Galactica the first day of the attacks, if she hadn't saved him at the Ragnar Anchorage.

It would have happened if Boomer had been a better shot.

Sometimes, the temptation to knock their heads together until they saw sense was almost too strong to resist. Picturing their faces if she ever caved in, she had to hold back a snicker.

"Something you want to share, Lieutenant?" Adama asked, his tone bemused, and it was only then that she realized she was grinning widely.

Had she had one drink too many, she would have told him. As it was, she just shook her head, holding the laughter in. _It's not that funny_. "No, sir," she replied.

He didn't push, instead clasping his hands behind his back and starting to pace the length of the room, back ramrod straight. Even dressed as a civilian, it would have been obvious that he was military.

Would Lee ever carry himself in such a way? He might say he didn't want to walk in his father's footsteps but that didn't mean he wasn't doing it. After all, he had gone through flight school like his old man, had been accepted to a school that would have put him on a fast track to command.

That was flying, though. Flying was… well, flying. Something that ran in his blood, something he had been built to do, something he needed to do. Just like she did.

Her head was starting to hurt, and she stretched her neck to alleviate the tension in her shoulders. She hadn't even realized she'd been standing so stiffly.

"Maybe you should get some rest," the Commander said from behind her.

"Later. Sir."

She heard him sigh softly, then the soft rustling of fabric, the tapping of his foot on the floor—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, turn, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, turn—resumed. The sound was soothing and she closed her eyes. That was how she missed Cottle's entrance. She only snapped out of her daze when she heard his voice ("Commander"); she hadn't even noticed that the Commander had stopped walking, which could only mean that she had been busy falling asleep standing up.

Now that she actually thought about it, maybe he did have a point about getting some rest.

"Doctor."

There was a tense silence and Kara stared at the two men, incredulous. She'd been waiting for what felt like hours and they were calling each other's titles like nothing out of the usual was happening? What was wrong with them? "How is he?" she asked, her voice stretched so thin she thought it would break.

Cottle didn't even look at her, focused solely on the Commander. "Barring complications, he'll live." Kara didn't miss the way Adama seemed to deflate, all tension draining from him.

"He has a head injury, an open wound on the leg that got infected. He's running a fever. He has three cracked ribs. Let's hope he didn't catch a cold down there, because it could cause problems."

The Commander nodded curtly, just once, a silent invitation for Cottle to continue.

"For the moment, what worries us the most is the combination of the fever and the head injury. From what we can tell, his memory has been fairly unreliable since the crash."

"What do you mean?"

Kara swallowed at the hard undercurrent in the Commander's tone, but as usual, Cottle seemed immune to it. Bastard.

"He wasn't very clear, but he said he lost consciousness and woke up a few times, and he didn't remember what had happened from one time to the other. He also wrote a note on the back of his hand. It has pretty much faded, but he was trying to read it." He looked at the Commander, as if checking that he should go on, before adding, "He asked confirmation that we lost the Colonies and we were on the run."

At this point, a good hundred questions were swimming thought Kara's mind, begging for her attention. Thankfully, the Commander was better at prioritizing than she was.

"Is it permanent?"

Feeling like she had been punched to the gut, she forced herself not to react. If Apollo's memory was shot, it would mean grounding him and—

"Too soon to tell," Cottle replied, like he wasn't talking about Lee's future, about his _life._ "But it seems like the memory lapses are less severe than they used to be, if he remembered enough to ask that question. If it was definitive, he wouldn't have known where he was at all."

The Commander's face seemed set in stone, Kara felt frozen solid. Only Cottle still looked to be flesh and blood in the room, as he finished, "We'll just have to wait and see. We should know more once the fever goes down and he has a chance to get some rest." He looked at the Commander critically. "I think you should go see him, Commander. And then, I don't want to see you here again until you've had at least five hours of uninterrupted sleep."

"We live on a battlestar and we're at war," Adama pointed out, his meaning clear.

Cottle looked thoroughly unrepentant. "And if it had been anyone but you, I would have ordered eight hours of sleep. I'll take what I can get."

He left on a curt, "Ishay will come get you," before the Commander could reply. That was probably why no one had managed to murder Cottle yet, Kara mused. He was quick to throw barbs and even quicker to retreat before having to face the consequences.

By the time Ishay arrived, Kara was ready to collapse and fall asleep on the ground. She wouldn't be in the way here, anyway. She wouldn't bother anyone, unless there was a crisis. But if there was a crisis, it was likely to involve Cylons and she would be out there flying and possibly dying from sheer fatigue.

"Let's go," the Commander said. "Then, I don't want to see you here until you've had five hours of uninterrupted sleep."

"We live on a battlestar and we're at war, sir," she replied.

He chuckled, the first sign that everything was going to be all right since Apollo's Viper had been hit. "And if it had been anyone but you, I would have ordered eight hours of sleep." He turned serious again long enough to add, "You did good out there, Lieutenant." He patted her shoulder as he passed her on his way out, and Kara followed him and Ishay, feeling absurdly choked up.

* * *

Cottle had been much too optimistic when he had ordered Bill to get five hours of sleep. At this point, he'd probably be lucky if he managed three.

First, the President called, congratulating him on getting "Captain Apollo" back—Bill had never thought to ask Lee what he thought about the fact that she kept using that nickname—and asking how he was. Bill kept his reply vague enough that she certainly understood he was hiding something, but he didn't feel like telling her that Lee had looked frighteningly young despite the three-day stubble, and too thin and too pale and much too still as he lay on a sickbay bed. He barely looked like Lee anymore, and while Cottle and the nursing staff were reassuring, Bill had noticed that they were monitoring Lee very closely.

_If we hadn't found him when we did, he wouldn't have lasted much longer, and that would probably have been a blessing because it turns out that there were humanoid Cylons down there_, and that thought was enough to drive the father in him half insane with grief despite the fact that they had gotten Lee back.

The President said she would drop by to check on Lee as soon as she could before hanging up, recommending that Bill got some sleep.

He would have been happy to but it turned out that he was too tired to sleep. No matter how much he tried to relax, no matter how much he tried to beckon sleep, it was just no use.

He knew this feeling from too many nights spent awake before big missions when he was a pilot himself, and then from too many times spent waiting for the return of his men as he was ordering them on missions he knew they might not come back from.

He got to his feet and walked to his desk, hands pressed against the small of his back. He was in good shape—good enough to give his son a run for his money when they sparred, good enough to be able to take on any of his men on hand-to-hand combat—but in the last couple of years, the odd stiffness and ache had been reminding him that he was getting older.

Officers his age retired from active duty or became admirals and worked safely in the Headquarters at Picon, where they couldn't become a liability in combat situation. Except that wasn't going to happen. It now seemed like he was going to go down with his ship, in a way he had never envisioned before.

He shook off the morbid thought. They weren't dead yet, they'd been outsmarting and outrunning the Cylons since the beginning of the war, and if he had anything to say about it, they would continue doing so.

A pile of reports was waiting for his signature, neatly stacked in a pile on his desk. He hadn't had any attention to spare for them in the last three days, but now he had a few hours to kill and hopefully, reports about maintenance and stocks and personnel rotations would be just what he needed to put him to sleep.

He sat down and got to work.

He was still at it three hours later, when the call came, Cottle's words pushing him to his feet with an energy he didn't think he had left. "We need you in sickbay, now, Commander." There was a crash in the distance, and Cottle hung up without waiting for Bill's reply. Bill was out the hatch before he could even start to wonder what was wrong.

* * *

Bill barged into sickbay and froze, taking in the scene. Lee was backed up against the bulkhead, pointing a gun at Ishay and staring at her with an empty expression. He was sweating—his skin shining with perspiration in the harsh lights overhead, his gown clinging to his chest and arms. His hand was shaking and the safety of the gun was off.

Damn.

"What happened?" Bill asked in a voice he hoped sounded steadier than he felt.

For a moment, no one replied. Then, a young, nervous First Class spoke up. "Ishay left him alone with Corporal Henick for a few moments. When she came back, the Corporal was unconscious and, well…" He was pointing his gun in Lee's direction, doubtlessly waiting for someone to give him an order.

Bill stepped farther into the room. Lee didn't even seem to notice, so intent was he on Ishay—if he was even seeing her. From his flushed skin, Bill wondered if he was aware of where he was and who was with him. He was reminded of what Kara told him about the way she had found Lee—ready to shoot her, unaware of where he was and who was around.

He spotted Henick on the floor. The man was conscious, but wasn't moving; his eyes followed Bill as he moved to the room.

Bill couldn't help being impressed that despite the state his son was in, he had managed to take out Henick. Either he had been holding out on him in their sparring sessions, or he thought he had been backed in a corner, and fought accordingly.

"Lee?" Bill called, marveling at how even his voice sounded.

Lee whirled on him and Adama startled at the expression on his face—defiance and hopelessness and a chilling resolve.

Ishay wasn't moving, biting her lower lip and staring at Lee. She looked scared but not to the point of losing her calm, which was good. They might need her help to subdue Lee.

"Son," Bill tried again, hoping it would bring a hint of recognition in his Lee's eyes. It did, but not in the way he had hoped; Lee's face merely hardened, and he looked away.

He said something Bill couldn't understand but Ishay spoke up. "Yes, he's real. You're safe, Captain."

Lee didn't react to her voice, didn't react when she started to bring one of her hands up, edging it closer to the gun, trying not to make any abrupt move.

Then, Bill heard hurried footsteps behind him. He shot a look to his side and spotted Cottle, standing out of the way as two more marines entered the room.

Lee saw them—or at least, realized that there were two more people in the room. He sighed, closed his eyes, looking defeated and lost. Then, he turned the gun on himself, bringing the barrel to his temple. Ishay froze in her movements, evidently afraid of pushing him to fire if he saw her as a threat.

"Damn," Bill said.

"Ishay—" Cottle started, but she shook her head powerlessly.

"I can't—" she muttered.

No one was moving, all eyes on Lee. Bill swallowed past the metallic taste of fear in his mouth, trying to look at the situation as a commander faced with a soldier, instead of as a personal situation. It didn't work as well as it should have, but at least he found his voice back enough to snap, "Look at me, Captain."

Something in Lee reacted, either to the words or to the steel in his voice, and he turned in Bill's direction, his grip on the gun tightening. His hand wasn't shaking anymore, Bill noticed, but the rest of him was. It looked like he could barely keep standing.

"You're not real," Lee said, and he sounded tired, as if he had had that discussion countless times already.

"Oh, I'm very real, Captain, and I'm giving you an order."

Lee's eyes focused on him for the first time since Bill had arrived. Encouraged, he took a step to Lee, then another, adding, "Drop the weapon now, Captain."

Lee met his gaze then, the blankness slowly giving way to fear. "Dad?" he whispered, frowning. "I… Are you…"

"Yes," Bill said firmly. _Yes, you're safe, and yes, I'm real and yes, you're scaring me to death, here, son._

Lee's hand wavered and he lowered his arm, and the gun with it. His grip on the gun was loose now, and Bill found himself thinking that the last thing they needed was for him to drop the damn thing. As if reading his mind, Ishay made her move, taking the gun from Lee without meeting any resistance. She let out a deep breath when she put the safety back on.

In two steps, Adama reached Lee and put his hands on his shoulders. He saw Lee's face go pale and caught him as he started to sink to the floor, aware that Ishay was helping him to support Lee's weight. Together, they gently lowered him down. Up close, Bill could feel the heat that was radiating from Lee.

"No," Lee muttered, trying to flinch from them. Obviously, whatever lucidity he had regained for a little, merciful while, it was fading fast.

Someone was moving behind him but Bill kept his attention on his son. He squeezed his arm, trying to get through to him. "It's okay," he said, his voice catching on the words. He coughed, and Cottle put a hand on his shoulder.

"Commander," he started.

"I know." He had to resist the urge to shake Lee and yell at him never to do that again—like he had when eight-year-old Lee had disobeyed his parents and gone into the water when they were spending the holiday near a lake, and had almost drowned.

Lee whispered something that Adama couldn't make out. "It's okay," he repeated, hoping Lee understood his tone even if the words weren't registering. "It's okay."

* * *

TBC...


	8. Chapter 8

Title : Crash

Author : Helen C.

Rating : R

Summary : _Galactica, Apollo, I've been hit. Repeat, I've been hit._ (Set in S2, somewhere between _Final Cut_ and _Flight of the Phoenix_).

Disclaimer : The characters and the universe were created and are owned by Ronald D. Moore and Universal Television Studios to name but a few. No money is being made. No copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

AN. Many thanks to elzed, siljamus and joey51 for beta'ing this, and to the countless people on LiveJournal who held my hand while I whined and whined and _whined_ about this fic.

AN2. Pure, unadulterated H/C. (If you don't like it, lie to me. And if you feel the need to offer con. crit., thanks, but not on this one, please.)

* * *

Chapter 8

Kara/Leoben was smirking at him, enjoying his attempts at pulling free from the bonds that were holding him in place.

"Looks like we can have some fun now."

The bonds were going to loosen up eventually, he just had to keep at it for a little longer. So far, he hadn't been hurt—just taunted and mocked, and he could deal with that.

Kara/Leoben selected a knife from the table on the far wall of the room—white, the table was white, everything was white from the ceiling to the floor, even Kara/Leoben was bathed in white light.

_You're dreaming. It's okay. It's just a dream._

She walked to him and he shivered involuntarily, fear quickening his heartbeat and his breathing.

_It's just a dream, it's just a dream, it's just a dream_, he chanted inwardly as he kept trying to break free.

_It's just a dream—_

Then, the bonds got loose—

—_it's just a dream—_

—Leoben/Kara approached him—

—_it's just a dream—_

—Lee closed his hands around his/her throat—

—_it's just a dream—_

"Lee!"

—and squeezed, his fingers digging satisfyingly into the flesh of her neck—

—_it's just a dream—_

"Damn, Lee—"

_It's just a dream._

"Wake up."

_It's just a dream._

"Lee."

_It's just a dream._

"Frak."

The sharp, stinging pain on his cheek took him by surprise and his fingers closed tighter against Kara/Leoben's throat.

_It's just a dream._

She/He groaned.

_It's just a dream._

The white vanished when he blinked, replaced by dark gray surroundings, bathed in a harsh light.

_It's just a dream._

Kara/Leoben was flushed, her/his eyes were wide with panic, her/his mouth opening and closing quickly.

_It's just a dream._

"Let go," she/he rasped.

_It's just a dream._

"Lee."

She/He was struggling, trying to get his hands to loosen their grip on her/his neck.

"Lee."

_It's just a dream._

"Frak, Lee!"

Not Kara/Leoben, he realized with a start.

"Let go."

Just Kara.

"Lee."

He let go of her as if he had been burned and stared at his own hands, the fingers still curled like they were holding something, while Kara moved away from him.

She came to a stop three steps from the bed with one hand on her neck and the other held out in front of her, as if to remind him that she wasn't a threat.

"Sorry," he said just as she snapped, "Frak, give a woman some warning would you?" She was rubbing at her neck and Lee noticed with alarm that she was panting and that her skin was turning red.

"Damn it, Cottle said you were doing better," Kara griped. Then, she looked at him and frowned. "Are you all right?"

He noticed that he was mirroring her movements, rubbing the skin of his wrists.

As if on cue, a nurse entered the cubicle, looking around. "Is everything okay?" she asked.

Lee looked down, unable to speak. He heard Kara say, "Fine. I just startled him."

The nurse hovered for a while. "Are you sure?"

"Sure," Kara said.

As the nurse still wasn't leaving, Lee raised his head to see both women looking at him. "It's fine," he said. _It's just that I tried to strangle Kara, but that's nothing new between us, really._ He felt a surge of hysterical laughter bubbling under the surface and looked down before either woman could spot it.

_It's not funny, it's not funny, it's not funny. _

His reassurances were enough for the nurse, who left on a reminder to call her if he needed anything.

Kara waited until they were alone before sitting down, then studied Lee with curiosity, making him feel exposed and vulnerable. "Who did you think I was?" she asked in a neutral tone, as if they were talking about their last patrol together and not about how he had just tried to kill her.

The name flew out of his mouth without conscious thought. "Leoben."

Kara startled, then grimaced, seemingly at a loss for words.

If it had been anyone but her, if he hadn't just tried his best to strangle her because apparently, in some dark recess of his brain, Kara was a Cylon _(a little heavy on the symbolism, don't you think?_), he wouldn't have added anything. But it was Kara and she deserved that much. "It…" He trailed off, took a breath before going on, "I had a nightmare on the planet. And just now. I was in a cell and Leoben was there and he morphed into you."

_Which is screwed up, even for us, _he thought, and decided that she didn't need to know about Leoben/Kara handing him a gun, and his using it. Or trying to.

Kara grimaced. "Okay, that's creepy," she agreed with a tilt of her head. "I can see why you'd be…"

"Creeped?" he offered, when she seemed at a loss for words.

She stuck out her tongue at him and he let out a broken chuckle, feeling strangely better. It was an alarming testament to his life that five minutes with this cocky, foul-mouthed, ill-tempered, annoying woman could make him feel better, could almost make him forget that his hands had been squeezing the air out of her not two minutes ago.

Almost.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"Better." Which wasn't saying much, considering how crappy the last few days had been.

"Good." She looked up at the ceiling, then at the medical equipment surrounding him. "You've been pretty out of it. The old man was starting to get worried."

What could he say to that? _Sorry?_ "Were _you _worried?" he asked, mentally begging her to take the opening.

She did, of course. She wouldn't have been Kara if she hadn't. "Me? Please! I've been too busy picking up the slack while you enjoyed your beauty sleep." She looked him in the face and shot him a triumphant smile. "We'll have you on your feet and boring the crap out of the lot of us with your briefings in no time."

"Thanks," he said, settling more comfortably into his bed. "I guess."

"Face it, Apollo. You're the most boring CAG in the history of CAGs."

He was falling asleep again but he still managed to say, "I thought I was the worst CAG in the history of CAGs, period."

"Not the worst," she said, and she wasn't whispering. "Not by a long shot."

* * *

The next time Lee woke up, his father was sitting next to his bed, studying a report with a faint frown on his face.

Lee wondered if the fact that he was growing annoyed at finding out that someone had set up camp next to him while he was out was a sign that he was getting better. "Hey," he called, keeping his voice low. From the dim light, it was probably the night shift.

His father looked up from his report and gave him a quick smile as he took off his glasses. "How do you feel?"

"Alive." He frowned. He still felt pretty banged up, and while Cottle had talked to him earlier in the day, it couldn't hurt to check. "How am I?" he asked, wondering if his father knew more than he did. Cottle had kept things pretty vague, promising he would give more details when Lee felt better—which Lee had translated to, as soon as he didn't fall asleep every five minutes.

"Alive," his father shot back. "In one piece." He set the report to the side, scooting his chair closer to the bed. He looked like he hadn't slept at all in the last few days, Lee noticed. "Do you remember anything?"

Lee snorted. "Lots of things." Flashes, disconnected memories, sensations, feelings. None of it made any sense and when he felt stronger, he'd try to figure it all out, put the memories back into some sort of order, try to figure out exactly what had gone down while he was on the planet. Maybe it would make him feel a little less freaked out. "Nothing useful, though."

His father nodded. "We'll need to talk about what happened at some point, but no one expects any miracles. Cottle says it's a wonder you were even standing when the SAR team found you. Between the shock, the head injury, the lack of food and the infection… well, it's not surprising that your memories aren't clear."

"Yeah." It didn't mean that it was easy to live with these blind spots in his memories.

His father sighed deeply and rubbed his eyes. Not for the first time since the start of the war, Lee was struck at how old his father looked. Had they been estranged for so long that Lee hadn't seen the changes taking place, or was it that he still expected to see the man he remembered from his childhood—strong and immortal?

"You look like hell," Lee offered, drawing a mirthless chuckle out of him.

"So do you." His father absently put his glasses back on. "We found a Cylon corpse," he said.

_"Now, you wouldn't shoot your only way off the planet, would you?"_

"Leoben," he added needlessly.

"Oh," Lee said. Kara hadn't told him that—of course, he hadn't stayed conscious long enough for her to give him a full report. "He was down there," he said, as if confirming the fact to himself. He was almost relieved to hear it. That part hadn't been a hallucination, at least.

"You remember," his father said, and it wasn't a question.

_"I might be your only chance to make it off this planet alive. If you follow me, I'll take you back to the Galactica."_

Lee was gritting his teeth, his head hurting in reaction. "He wanted to make a deal with me," he said, his voice tight.

His father's face seemed set in stone and Lee fixed his gaze on the man's clenched hands. It was better than trying to decipher his father's expression. Lee didn't feel up to the challenge of trying to analyze his body language while he was drugged and still reeling from too vivid nightmares and too little sleep.

Frak, even under the best circumstances, he could never guess what his father was thinking.

"Is that when you shot him?" his father asked in a clinical tone.

He nodded and saw his father's hands relax. He wondered if he was aware he was doing it.

"It's good, that you remember," his father said.

"Yeah." He pulled the covers closer to him, not caring that they were rough against his skin. He wished he could remember more clearly.

_No, I don't. I wish I could forget the whole thing ever happened._

_I wish it had never happened._

"Will I be able to fly again?" he asked.

His father didn't seem surprised by the non sequitur. "Yes. When you're ready."

Lee looked at him then, wondering if it was obvious that he was torn between the need to fly and the fear of what might happen—fear that he might be shot down, fear that he might crash again and die this time.

He had always known that it could happen—even when his future consisted of test pilot school instead of combat flying—but having lived through it changed his perspective. He wondered if Kara had felt the same way, after her own accident. They had never talked about it, but when did they ever talk about things that truly mattered?

"There's no hurry," his father added, and that was such a load of crap that he looked embarrassed at having said it.

"Thanks," Lee said, appreciating that his father was willing to cut him that much slack. "But it would still be better for all of us if I didn't take my sweet time getting there, wouldn't it?" He knew exactly what their duty roster looked like, knew how many pilots and how many Vipers they were short.

"Yes." His father got to his feet, looking like he wanted to hit something. Lee understood the feeling; he often allowed himself a few rounds against a punching bag after drawing inventories of what little resources were available for their defense.

In that spirit, it was probably a good thing that the need to fly seemed larger than the fear.

Hopefully, it would always remain so.

* * *

Lee was bored, staring at the ceiling and wondering how long it would take for him to wish he was back on the planet, fighting for his life, instead of lying here and counting down the seconds until he was released, when Kara barged in, carrying a bottle of moonshine and a stogie.

Lee didn't try to speculate about where she had gotten the latter; it seemed like Kara had a never-ending supply of them. They kept appearing, as if summoned by magic, whenever the situation called for it. Just like his father's reserve of ambrosia seemed to be bottomless—and Lee dearly hoped it was. No matter how long it took for them to reach Earth, it would be too long; they'd need the alcohol.

With both her hands taken, Kara caught one of the legs of the chair with her foot and dragged it close to the bed. Then she flopped down on it and put a feet up on the bed as Lee glared at her, shifting to the side to accommodate her.

"I hope at least one of these is for me," he said.

The corners of her eyes were crinkling with lines of laughter when she replied, "Well, actually, I was going to enjoy both of these to rub it in that you're stuck here, on sickbay food."

He growled at her, "If the next words out of your mouth are, 'Your pain is my entertainment, I'll…'" He trailed off, unable to think of a sufficiently convincing threat. Not much phased Kara, damn it.

She snorted inelegantly. "You'll what? Stammer at me? Glare?" She took on her most challenging expression. "You'll kick my ass?"

"I'll order you to take care of all the paperwork," Lee replied, then winced at how lame that sounded.

Kara threw him a pitying look. "Oh, come on, Lee. You can do better than that. You know I would just mess everything up and you'd have to redo it anyway."

A cheerful thought, considering she was in charge of the CAG duties while he was out of commission. "You'll do the inventory," he offered. "In fact, you'll do all the inventories for the next year."

She paused, considering, before nodding. "I'll allow it, since you're still impaired."

"I am not—" he started.

She talked all over him, ignoring him. "And I can't let you drink that yet, Cottle would have my head." Lee didn't feel up to drinking anyway, but he'd die before admitting it. "That stogie is yours, though. For when you get sprung from here."

"Wanna help me stage an escape?" he asked, only half-joking.

She laughed at him. "Working fast, aren't you?"

He was tired and his head was starting to hurt, otherwise he probably wouldn't have replied, "Depends on what I'm doing."

She looked him up and down with an assessing look that would have made a less confident man squirm. As it was, Lee had to resist the urge to look away. It took a lot of his self-control to hold her gaze as she stared at him, a dangerous look on her face.

"Getting ahead of yourself, Lee," she said with a raised eyebrow and the look on her face was the one she always gave him when trying to dare him to do something stupid.

In this case, his best defense was probably silence, so he went with it.

Her gaze softened when he brought up a hand to rub his eyes. He had bruises on his wrists, just like her neck wore marks of what had happened. He wondered how she had explained them.

"I should let you get some sleep," she said, and while he heard the concern in her tone, she still managed to make it sound slightly teasing.

He shrugged, reached out for the stogie that she reluctantly put in his hand. "Protect it with your life," she said.

"I will," he swore. She got to her feet, bottle of moonshine still in hand.

"And for frak's sake," she added as she walked out, "Get back on your feet. This CAG stuff is boring as hell!"

"You're the one who wouldn't help me make a run for it," he pointed out, and she gave him a dismissive gesture before she disappeared behind the curtains. "I would have helped you," he called after her.

She poked her head in. "You left me here, told me to listen to the doc and to be patient, you asshole," she replied. "You reap what you sow."

He thought about giving her a pleading look, or maybe offering her a bribe (he would exchange the stogie against getting out of here) but his head was starting to hurt a little and he still had some dignity left.

Instead, when she left on a last teasing, "Well, that moonshine won't drink itself," he called her a heartless jerk, hoping she heard the gratitude behind the words.

* * *

TBC...


	9. Chapter 9

Title : Crash

Author : Helen C.

Rating : R

Summary : _Galactica, Apollo, I've been hit. Repeat, I've been hit._ (Set in S2, somewhere between _Final Cut_ and _Flight of the Phoenix_).

Disclaimer : The characters and the universe were created and are owned by Ronald D. Moore and Universal Television Studios to name but a few. No money is being made. No copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

AN. Many thanks to elzed, siljamus and joey51 for beta'ing this, and to the countless people on LiveJournal who held my hand while I whined and whined and _whined_ about this fic.

AN2. Pure, unadulterated H/C. (If you don't like it, lie to me. And if you feel the need to offer con. crit., thanks, but not on this one, please.)

* * *

Chapter 9

As expected, Lee started pleading with Cottle to release him four days after getting admitted to sickbay—in other words, when he started being able to stay awake for a few hours in a stretch.

Bill sympathized; at least, when he had been shot, he'd been able to bully his way out of sickbay soon after waking up. Too soon, probably, but he hadn't felt like he had a choice, with the Fleet split in two and Saul looking desperate to get out of the situation.

Lee had a choice, though, and if Bill wanted to be honest with himself, he'd rather his son took his time before he got back into a cockpit. Before the war, when they still had a military infrastructure, Lee would have been ordered to see a shrink before he was allowed back to flight status.

There were four shrinks on the Fleet. None of them was specialized in battle-fatigue or PTSD treatment, all of them were ridiculously overbooked.

They didn't have the kind of time they needed to get their pilots back into reasonable shape, and that was yet another thing that drove all the officers above the rank of lieutenant insane. Eventually, they wouldn't have a choice but to order leave for their personnel; eventually, one of their fighters would need more serious help than his co-workers, friends or superior officers could provide.

_Cross that bridge when you get to it,_ he told himself. Being a commander in these circumstances meant that he had to accept that some things were out of his control and would remain so indefinitely.

He peered into Lee's cubicle. As he had expected, his son was staring at the ceiling, looking angry and tired and bored out of his skull.

"He hasn't tried to sneak out yet but I expect it won't take much longer," Cottle said, walking up to Bill. "I think he already tried to bribe at least one of his visitors."

"_He _can hear you," Lee called from the other side of the curtain.

"He must have been a joy as a teenager," Cottle added, not bothering to lower his voice.

"He still is," Lee griped. Bill chuckled, looking as his son leaned up on an elbow. He looked unnervingly like he had when he was sulking, back when he was fifteen, come to think of it—a welcome sight after wondering whether or not his son was going to survive. It was a clear sign that Lee was still… Lee. Fighting and kicking and screaming his way back into his old life.

"You don't know the half of it," he said to Cottle, and he saw Lee's lips twitch as he rolled his eyes, in a gesture of teenager defiance that Bill dearly hoped he was putting on for show.

Cottle retreated as Bill made his way to the bed. "I'd ask how you feel, but I think I can guess the answer to that."

"Yeah, well…" Lee gestured around him. "Sickbay. Feeling better. Do the math."

Bill knew that Cottle didn't want Kara to sneak him paperwork, nor did he want Lee to work on his report yet, so all his son could do was sleep and wait until Cottle deemed him well enough to move on to the next step.

"You're supposed to rest," he pointed out.

"I'm rested."

Bill disagreed; his son hadn't even started gaining back the weight he'd lost, he still slept more than fifteen hours a day, and his hands started shaking, barely noticeably, when he forced himself to stay awake too long. Bill didn't think it would go over well if he said it, though. "You'll be back on duty soon enough," he promised.

"Right." Lee passed a hand through his hair and Bill noticed that the IV was gone. "I just hope Cottle won't wait for all my memories to become crystal clear, 'cause I don't think it would ever happen then."

"Anything else come back?"

Lee was frowning at the covers, and Bill smiled at the telltale sign that he was wiggling his toes under the cover. He had forgotten that Lee often did that when he was a small kid and he or Carolanne read a story to him at bedtime. "Did I try to shoot Kara, on the planet?"

Though Lee had asked the question in a detached tone, he was studying Bill intently. Even if he tried to lie, Lee was bound to spot it.

"Afraid so."

"Great." He lay back down, absently rubbing at his wrist. There were fading bruises there, still darkening the skin. "Just great."

"She knows you weren't yourself, Lee."

"Yeah." The reply was non-committal and half-hearted at best. It was impossible to tell what was going on in his mind, but then Bill rarely managed to read his son well.

Wasn't that why hearing that Lee had pulled a gun at Saul's head had shocked him so much? He should have seen it coming; if it had been any other officer under his command, he might have seen it coming. But Lee had taken him totally by surprise.

Hell, no one had seen it coming; popular opinion before that incident was that Lee was a by-the-book officer who would never dream of putting a toe over the line, and Bill had agreed with that assessment. He should have known his CAG—his son—better than that.

Lee brought a hand to his head and softly massaged his temple, suddenly looking very tired. Bill didn't think that now was the time to tell Lee that he had also tried to kill him before trying to take his own life. In fact, there would never be a good time for that.

It was probable Lee would learn about it anyway; news about incidents such as this traveled fast. Maybe it would be gentler if it came from him, but Bill just couldn't bring himself to do that.

Hopefully Lee would never hear, and if he did… Well, Bill just prayed that he would never actually remember the scene.

His son spoke up again, not looking at him anymore. "Is that why you're…" He gestured vaguely, which didn't exactly help Bill to understand what he meant.

How did his behavior appear to his son? He didn't think he was acting any different, but if Lee had picked up on something, maybe some of his relief must have shown—which was certainly a good thing. Carolanne had often said that half of his and Lee's problems came from the fact that they weren't able to express their emotions correctly, or at all.

"Partly," he said. "I'm just…" He trailed off when Lee looked at him. His eyes seemed to look right through him, examining every nuance, every word he said, every move he made. "I'm glad you're back on board," he eventually forced out, hoping that for once, Lee would understand what he wasn't saying.

He breathed out softly when Lee nodded, his face softening. "Yeah. I'm glad to be back on board," he said, a hint of humor coloring his voice.

Bill got to his feet and Lee put his hands behind his head, frowning up at the ceiling. "And now, I'm back to counting the seconds until I'm sprung from his place."

Bill could only pat his leg comfortingly and leave before Lee decided to take out his frustration on him.

* * *

It took ten days for Cottle to release Lee for light duty, threatening dire consequences if Lee stretched the limits of what light was supposed to mean.

As if he was going to be able to steal a Viper and offer himself an unauthorized flight.

As if Kara was going to allow him to hurry his way through recovery. "This is my payback for when you played mother hen after I crashed," she told him gleefully when he took possession of his rack again.

"Don't call me mother hen ever again," he replied. Not the snappiest comeback ever, but nothing else came to mind.

She left, shaking her head, and he resisted the absurd urge to stick out his tongue at her; after all, Hotdog and Racetrack were looking on and he had to set an example.

So, he took the high road, and instead of following her to engage in a pissing contest, he wandered the corridors for a while, wondering what he could do. His whole life had been centered around work for so long that he didn't know what to do with himself when he wasn't on duty. An evening off was fine but he was facing at least another week of… this, before Cottle allowed him to resume his duties.

_Yup, still bored_, he thought, his steps leading him straight to the CAG office. He stood in front of the hatch for a while, then shrugged, knocked, and stepped in when he got no answer. Kara was probably using it since she was covering for him, but she wasn't in for now. He might as well take the opportunity to enjoy some time to himself. After over a week stuck in sickbay, some privacy would be welcome.

He should probably get to work on his report. His memories still didn't add up to anything truly coherent, but Cottle didn't think that it was likely to get any better. "Learn to live with it," he told Lee at some point. Letting go of points of concern and just living with it wasn't something Lee was very good at, but at this point, trying to assemble the pieces of the puzzle was wearing on his nerves.

He picked up a chair and studied the papers strewn on the desk in front of him.

Kara had never hidden her disdain for paperwork, but the sight was impressive, even for her. He smiled softly, but the smile faded as he remembered waking up in the infirmary, hands around her throat. They hadn't had any chance to discuss it in private yet, but what could he say to her after that, anyway?

"Sorry I tried to kill you," was likely to earn him a punch in the face for being too direct and for breaking their tacit agreement not to discuss those kind of things.

"Thanks for saving my life," was likely to make her laugh and mock him for days, if not weeks. Kara wasn't really big on having deep discussions—at least not when he was ready to have them.

"Thank you," no more said, would just annoy her.

A rustling sound from the entrance got him to look up just as he was deciding that the situation was hopeless. His father was staring at him from the doorway.

"Commander," Lee said, getting to his feet.

"Lee," his father replied. "Cottle finally let you go, then?" He came into the room and closed the hatch behind him, gesturing for Lee to sit, then took the lone chair in front of the desk.

Lee shrugged. "Yeah. I think he got sick of me asking."

"I don't think Cottle can get sick of people begging out. In fact, he probably enjoys hearing people begging out."

While Lee recognized the doctor's value (where would they all be without him?), it felt good to smile about it, now that he wasn't stuck in sickbay any longer.

"You're working on your report?"

Lee looked down at the papers on his desk, covered in Kara's handwriting. He could see an inventory report, old flight rosters with annotations all over them, and sit-rep sheets. Obviously, she didn't believe in filing—but then, as she was covering for him and they were one pilot short, she had excuses. "Yeah," he said, as his father was still waiting for a reply. He shuffled the papers absently, but his mind wasn't in putting them in order.

He hated not being able to remember, hated the thought that he had been frakked up enough to try to kill Kara, hated the fact that he had almost allowed himself to be taken prisoner down there.

_What if Leoben had shown up at a point when I didn't remember anything about Cylons looking human? What if he had walked to me when I was unconscious, when I was sleeping? What if—?_

"I'm sorry," he said, cutting off his own thoughts. He faced his father. "Looks like I lost this round."

The cut-the-crap commander's voice was softened by something like pride when his father said, "You survived almost three days on hostile territory with a head injury and a bad fever and you managed to evade capture. You're still alive. I'd say you did just fine."

Lee looked up in surprise as his father rested his hands on the desk, covering a performance report. "I'm the one who should apologize."

"What for?" Lee asked.

"I told you we wouldn't leave. I told you we'd come back for you." His father was looking at him, offering no excuse or explanations, awaiting his judgment without comment, and Lee couldn't think of anything to say that didn't sound stupid or petty or childish.

He knew how close the Fleet had come to leaving him behind, and he had mixed feelings about that. He understood the reasoning behind the decision and he even agreed with it, but he couldn't help being relieved that they had stayed long enough to rescue him, and guilty because he didn't think they would have tried so hard if he hadn't been his father's son (and how ironic was that, considering how hard he had struggled all his life to avoid being seen as a daddy's boy?), and, he might as well admit it, angry and hurt that they had considered leaving without him.

_"If it was you, we'd never leave."_

Back then, he hadn't believed it for more than a few seconds. He knew his father had told him what he needed to hear, but he had never thought that he would actually keep his promise. There was too much at stake, they had too few resources and too little hope of saving themselves to waste time fighting on a lost cause.

And yet, here he was—because his father had come back for him, risking other pilots' lives to save his, looking for three days.

In light of the fact that his father had missed out on most of his and Zak's childhoods, Lee may be entitled to ask for more, ask of his father that he prove himself again and again. The question was, should he?

"We were about to leave," his father said, his voice laced with regret.

"But you didn't," Lee replied.

The fact that his father had come back had to mean more than the fact that in the end, he had been ready to sacrifice Lee in order to save the rest of the Fleet.

His father looked old and weary, and Lee went on, hoping that for once, he'd be able to make his father's life easier, not worse. "You did come back." And he knew enough to know that his father must have fought for the right to do so, for the right to put the Fleet in danger for his sake.

"Three days is staying," he insisted, because his father still didn't look convinced.

Yes, he was torn. As an officer understood about necessary sacrifices, about putting the lives of the many before the lives of the few (more so now that before the attacks), but he was also a human being who didn't want to die any time soon.

_"I was terrified," _he wanted to say. _"I didn't want to die alone."_ He didn't see himself being that honest, though—especially not with his father.

He didn't think it would be a good idea to tell him that he would probably have blamed him for leaving him behind, if it had come to that and he had been lucid enough to notice.

His father was looking at his hands, splayed on the papers of the desk. His wedding band was still shining on his finger, a testament to the fact that his father was no better at letting go of the past than Lee was.

He put his own hand on top of his father's, noticing how they tensed at the touch.

He waited for his father to look at him, held his eyes. "Thank you," he said, hoping his father would take it as the absolution it was meant to be.

* * *

Kara was doing crunches when Lee entered the bunkroom, taking her time to give the muscles a real workout. Between taking over the CAG's duties and trying to figure out a way to make a flight roster that would allow them to be efficient while Apollo was out of commission, she hadn't had time to focus on physical training as much as she would have liked.

She needed to blow off some steam.

For a few moments, she went on like he wasn't there, only stopping when she realized that he was staring at her like he didn't recognize her. She paused mid-movement, her back a few inches from the floor, and frowned up at him.

"Lee?" she called, uncomfortably reminded of his vacant expression on the planet.

He shook his head distractedly, nodded in greeting and went to his locker. She rested her elbows on the floor and watched on as he took out his running shoes.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Cottle cleared me to go running." He got his hands on his running shorts, and shot her a look. "Wanna come?" he asked.

"As if I'd miss an opportunity to watch you take your first steps, Apollo," she replied, getting to her feet.

"You're going to be a pain, aren't you?" he asked, undoing his belt.

She gave him a mocking grin. "No, your leg is going to be a pain. The lack of exercise in the last two weeks is going to be a pain." She put a foot on the table and stretched her leg as he hurriedly took off his pants. "I'm just going to be here, making fun of you every step of the way," she added.

He put on his short and shoes, turning his back to her as he knotted the laces. She waited for him as he went through his own warm-up routine, making a show of checking her watch and shifting from one foot to the other. "I'm starting to think that maybe it was a bad idea, after all," he said.

"Too bad, Apollo," she replied. "You don't get to rethink this one."

She headed to the door without waiting for him, leaving him to hurry after her.

Because she remembered that he had tried to help her when she had busted her knee, she didn't try to run him into the ground. It was clear that he was still favoring his leg and she knew from experience that taking up running again after two weeks wasn't easy.

It didn't mean she wasn't going to enjoy this a least a little, though. Gods knew he had teased her enough when she had been in his place. "Have you always been so damn slow, Apollo?" she called over her shoulder, goading him.

He ignored her, taking a deep breath instead of wasting energy replying to her.

"You can do better than that."

"Whatever you say, Starbuck," he replied distractedly. He was slowing down and when she turned to make sure he was fine, he had stopped completely and was staring around, white-faced and breathless.

"Apollo?" she called, when he started to rub the spot where his leg had been injured.

He blinked and the confused expression vanished from his face as quickly as it had come.

"You want to stop?"

His reply shot out sharp and fast. "No!"

Surprised at his forcefulness, she opened her mouth to ask if he was sure, but he was quicker. "It's okay," he said. "Just…" He gave a nervous chuckle, a little winded. "I think I may have broken my personal speed record, down there."

She bit her lip. He seemed to be waiting for an answer, so she said, "And no one was there to see it, so I guess we only have your word."

"Oh, the despair of it all," he shot back. He took off again and she muffled a curse, darting in after him. For a while, they ran in silence, nodding to a few people on the way, adjusting their pace to one another's. This was like flying together—their movements harmonized as if they shared a brain.

They turned a corner and Lee almost bumped into the Commander, who shot both of them an amused glance as Lee saluted sloppily, not stopping.

"Do you hear something, Lieutenant?" the Commander asked her as she passed him.

"Nothing but the rain, Sir," she called back.

"Same here," Lee threw in, then picked up his pace.

"Oh, no, you don't," Kara said, rushing after him. "If you think for a second that I'm going to allow you to get your sorry ass into the shower before I can…"

"Big words, Starbuck. Big words."

She caught up with him easily and they kept running, their steps and breathing in synch.

Just like flying.

end


End file.
